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The sales outpaced the first month's tally for Windows 2000 and only slightly trailed that for Windows XP, the market researcher said Thursday. Commercial revenue from Vista in December was 62.5 percent above that racked up by Windows 2000 in March 2000, its first month after launch. But Vista's total is 3.7 percent below what Microsoft got in the commercial channel for Windows XP in November 2001, its first month on the market.

In addition, the average price of Vista was about 4 percent higher than of Windows 2000 and roughly similar to that of Windows XP, NPD said.

"I think these results could be classified as 'strong,' or at least 'stronger than expected,'" NPD analyst Chris Swenson said in an e-mail interview. "Although Vista dollars were slightly lower than XP dollars in its first full month, I consider Microsoft's December results to be very impressive, given the commercial-only 'soft launch' approach that Microsoft took with the OS."

The results track only U.S. licenses sold indirectly to businesses, through resellers such as Soft Mart, Software Spectrum and CompuCom, Swenson said; NPD does not track software licensed directly from Microsoft. Vista went on sale to businesses at the end of November and should start showing up on new PCs and on retail shelves at the end of this month.

The marketing muscle behind the consumer launch should allow Vista sales to businesses to start eclipsing what Microsoft saw with Windows XP.

"Sometime after January 30, when Microsoft makes Vista available to the general public and ratchets up the marketing campaign, I suspect that we will likely see sales of Vista in the commercial channel begin to meet or surpass levels previously set by XP," Swenson said.

A key question around Vista is how quickly businesses will move to the new operating system. Microsoft has said that a year after Vista's launch, it expects twice the number of business users it had in the first year after Windows XP launched.