On Tuesday, at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference In Houston, the company launched its Vista Compatibility Center, designed for giving PC users the chance to check whether or not their systems and applications can get along well with Microsoft’s latest operating system.

However, things didn’t go smoothly. The center was unavailable all day today; instead of finding Vista-related information, visitors could see this message: The Windows Vista Compatibility Center will be launching soon, please check back!. Such situations are normal, as the website is still in its trial mode.

Microsoft is very confident in its newly established website; a much more closer connection between the company and its customers is expected to be formed soon, as the continuous consumer feedback will definitely help Microsoft help Vista users better understand and more easily adopt the new product.

In its six years of existence, Windows XP has managed to reach an incredible range of users; even though some are turning towards Vista or other companies’ competing operating systems, XP is still going strong.

Although Vista sales are going up, lots of users that have been testing it complained about a wide range of issues. As Windows 7 should be out by late 2009, there are a lot of business customers that have decided to stick with XP until that happens.

For this very reason, Microsoft’s move was perfectly timed.

At the beginning of May, during a speech held in Tokyo, Bill Gates noted that since Vista was released in late 2006, more than 140 million copies of the operating system were sold. If we compare Windows XP and Vista, things seem to be looking good; while XP reached 400 million users in 51 months, it only took Vista 16 months to go past the 140 million mark.