Acer slams Windows' Vista operating system

FRANKFURT: The head of Taiwan-based personal computer maker Acer, Gianfranco Lanci, hit out at Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, saying that the "entire industry" was disappointed by it.

"The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista," the head of the world's fourth-biggest PC maker told the Financial Times Deutschland in its online edition on Monday.

Never before had a new version of Windows done so little to boost PC sales. "And that's not going to change in the second half of this year," Lanci said.

"I really don't think that someone has bought a new PC specifically for Vista," he added.

Microsoft's operating system commands a market share of around 90 per cent, with Apple and Linux accounting for the rest.

While the industry had waited for years for Vista, the software was not really ready when it was launched to great pomp at the start of this year, Lanci complained.

"Stability is certainly a problem," he said. Acer, with annual sales of $11.3 billion (8.2 billion euros), ranks number four in the PC market behind Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo.