Pre-orders for Windows 7 have already topped the sales of copies of Vista sold in the first year at stores run by DSGi, according to category director Jeremy Fennell.

Windows 7 officially goes on sale 22 October, but has been available for pre-order since July at a huge discount. Since then, it's already outdone the first year of Vista sales at stores such as PC World and Dixons.

"We've sold more copies on preorder than we sold of Vista for the whole year," he said, speaking today at the Windows 7 launch in London.

Fennell credited this with the quality of the operating system, rather than the skill of Microsoft's marketing machine. "It's a good product... it hasn't taken Microsoft to hype the product," he claimed, adding Windows 7 was "better than the product we've seen before."

He said customer research conducted by DSGi showed that 60 per cent of consumers looking to buy a new PC had delayed buying to wait for Windows 7 to arrive.

The survey also showed that while 44 per cent were not planning on upgrading and 22 per cent weren't sure, 19 per cent of people were looking to buy a new PC and 15 per cent were looking to buy a Windows 7 upgrade.