Microsoft executives already are counting their Vista chickens before the next-generation Windows release has hatched.

On Wednesday a Microsoft vice president detailed for attendees of Merrill Lynch's IT Services & Software Conference Microsoft's reasons for its high expectations for Vista, the release of Windows client due to ship in the latter half of this year.

Microsoft expects 200 million new PCs to ship with Vista preloaded in the first 24 months that the operating system is available, said Michael Sievert, corporate vice president, Windows Product Management & Marketing. Comparatively, Windows 95 shipped on 67 million new PCs during its first two years of life.

Company watchers seem to be of mixed minds about Vista's prospects. A number of them have wondered aloud whether Vista will include enough new features to persuade users to upgrade. Others have questioned how quickly business customers will be ready to deploy the new operating system en masse. Will they kick the tires for a couple of years, making sure all their existing software works perfectly, before taking the upgrade plunge?

But others say Vista will provide Microsoft with a big bang. In a February 3 research note, Goldman Sachs analysts were upbeat, projecting that Vista will be a significant driver of both top-line and bottom-line growth for Microsoft. Goldman Sachs analysts are estimating that Vista could generate $1.0 to $1.5 billion of incremental revenue for Microsoft in the first 18 months following its launch, "with the business upgrade cycle to follow."

"Vista and the implication for Microsoft's longer term profits" was the subject of Sievert's February 1 talk. While Sievert did highlight the new consumer and business features during his remarks, he focused even more on the business reasons behind Microsoft's bullish Vista expectations.

Sievert identified four reasons that Microsoft is so bullish about Vista's prospects. Overall industry and PC growth; Microsoft's plans to combat software piracy; a change in the mix of the types of PCs being sold; and the Redmond software maker's plans for improving its customer "relationship after the sale" all will be key drivers for Vista growth, he said.

International Data Corp. is predicting that worldwide PC shipment growth is slowing, but not ceasing. In 2006 PC shipments will reach 230 million units worldwide, according to the research outfit. That number should grow slowly but steadily through 2009, when IDC is predicting 287 million new PC units will be sold. Given those figures, Microsoft seems to be expecting just under half of all new PCs to be preloaded with Vista.

Microsoft does not seem to be counting on the majority of Vista upgrades to come from its Windows XP customer base – at least not XP users who only deployed the current version of Windows in the last year or so -- Sievert acknowledged.

"Some (XP users) will upgrade, and some won't," Sievert told Merill Lynch conference attendees. "People are much more satisfied with XP than previous versions of Windows."

Sievert said Microsoft is expecting Windows 2000 users to be among those interested in upgrading to Vista, as well as customers for whom tighter security is a top priority. While Windows XP Service Pack 2 admittedly includes a lot of security-enhancing features, Sievert said he still expects Vista to trump all Windows variants on that front.

"User account protection is nothing to underestimate," Sievert told conference attendees. "Most enterprises will have users running in standard mode to prevent executables from being installed" indiscriminately, he said.

In the coming months, Sievert said to expect Microsoft to continue its Windows Genuine campaign in order to "make piracy harder." Via Windows Genuine, Microsoft requires users to validate their Windows copies in order to obtain downloads. To entice them to do so, Microsoft throws in offers of free software and other incentives.

Last year, one third of the Windows PCs that shipped worldwide included pirated versions of Microsoft's software, he said.

"We need Genuine customer to get a different experience than non-Genuine" ones, he said. "We're just at the beginning of this."

In terms of improving the overall mix of Windows versions, Sievert and his colleagues have some specific ideas, too. By convincing customers there is more value in higher-end SKUs, such as Windows Media Center Edition or Windows Professional Edition, Microsoft is hoping to convince more customers to buy higher-priced Windows variants.

Rather than upping Windows Vista's price, "our focus is more on getting people to buy in at a higher price point," Sievert explained.

He also said Microsoft is looking at some different business models, including ones where users "won't have to pay for their Windows PCs all up front."

Sievert noted that emerging PC markets outside the U.S. are growing at a rapid clip and will be another area Microsoft plans to plumb for Vista sales. He said the company is looking beyond its Windows XP Starter Edition campaign in developing countries, to encompass the "hundreds of thousands of affluent customers in emerging markets."

On the "customer relationship" front, Microsoft is continuing to work to make its volume-license programs, such as Software Assurance, more attractive to customers. With Vista, for example, Microsoft has announced it will offer a Windows Vista Enterprise SKU that will be a special edition for Software Assurance volume licensees only.

"The value of the IP (intellectual property) in our software is going up, not down," Sievert said. "We need to earn a right to charge for that value."