Stocks:  (AAPL)(MSFT)(BELL)(HPQ)

Vista is coming to town. Its strengths as a operating system seem to be considerable, even when when compared to the best version of Linux destop and Apple’s Tiger OS.

Research firm IDC expects 90 million units of Vista will be shipped in 2007. And, any number of these do not have the processing power to run Vista. So, there will be some level of surge in PC purchases at both enterprises and by consumers. The extent of that is really not possible to forecast.

Mac sales have been doing well. In its fiscal Q4, Apples sold 1.61 million Macs, up 30% from the same quarter a year ago. PC sales in the US will be about 66 million for the entire year.

Apple’s recent success with the Mac came pre-Vista and its Tiger OS X may have been attractive compared to older versions of Windows.

But, things may change for Apple, and soon. The Windows OS still has well over 90% of the computer market, Vista hards needs much marketing.

Will it drive PC sales and  reignite share increases for companies like Dell and Hewlett-Packard?

If so, that is not good news for Apple.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

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