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The NPD Group has some figures now from the Windows 7 launch, and are reporting that the new Microsoft operating system is selling well — or at least, much better than Vista did at its launch. In the first few days of sales, Windows 7 units in the U.S. moved 234 percent faster than Vista did in its equivalent launch window.

Of course, in many ways the bar wasn’t set too high. Still, Microsoft must be feeling relieved at the good sales clip for what is still, after all, its core business.

Unfortunately, thanks to pre-sales discounts and general lack of promotional effort behind the Ultimate version, revenue growth wasn’t quite as impressive. Looking strictly at dollar sales, Windows 7 is up 82% over than the equivalent time period for Vista.

The NPD reported the top-selling versions of the software and their average prices for the week ending October 24 as follows:

1. Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade / $76
2. Windows 7 Pro Upgrade / $147
3. Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack 3 User Upgrade / $149

In a tough economic time for packaged software, Windows 7 appears to be faring fairly well. The PC hardware sales picture wasn’t nearly as rosy, however. Although total PC sales were up 49 percent in year-over-year sales and a full 95 percent over the previous week, the overall growth rate was not as high as during the Vista launch window, which saw a 68% jump in year-over-year and 170% gain over the week prior to Vista’s launch. Vista had a slight advantage with its January release however, which typically shows a larger PC sales footprint than the month of October.

Windows 7 has been launched and that certainly is great new for India when it comes to the pricing. The prices are apparently 40% lower than the US prices.

We managed to source Windows 7 prices and here they are:

Windows 7 Home Basic – Rs. 5,899
Windows 7 Home Premium – Rs. 6,799
Windows 7 Professional – Rs. 11,199
Windows 7 Ultimate – Rs. 11,799

How can Windows 7 be bigger than Harry Potter, you ask? That box can’t be more than 15 inches tall, while Daniel Radcliffe is at least 5′8”!

Well, what Amazon meant when they said that was this: Windows 7 is the biggest grossing pre-order product of all time on Amazon.co.uk.

Even Amazon UK’s MD Brian McBride sounds a bit surprised: “The launch of Windows 7 has superseded everyone’s expectations, storming ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as the biggest grossing pre-order product of all-time at Amazon.co.uk, and demand is still going strong.” We’re not; we wrote earlier that Windows 7 is being preordered a lot more than Vista, and that trend obviously hasn’t changed until the very last day.

I’ve been testing Windows 7 since the first beta and while I have my qualms about it, one can’t deny that it’s better than Vista: it feels faster, looks nicer, the unnecessary fat *cough* sidebar *cough* was trimmed and it has a whole lot better hardware and driver support. And one also cannot deny that Windows XP was released in October 2001, which means that Windows users have been waiting eight long years for a decent replacement for their operating system. Tomorrow, they’ll be getting one; no wonder they’re excited.

Now here is IconTweaker theme for Windows XP which brings Windows 7 Icons to your Windows XP.

IconsTweaker is an icon collection that will enable you to replace Windows XP icons with Windows 7 ones. This icon package has been built with IconTweaker, a freeware application and a good alternative to the more popular IconPackager.

The Pack includes all Windows 7 shell icons for Start Menu, Folders, Network Connections, drives, files and Desktop. It also includes beautiful and transparent Windows 7 cursors.

Download IconTweaker Theme for Windows XP.