Early reports showed that retail box sales of Windows 7 were up a whopping 234% compared to sales of Vista over the same time period. A new report has now been published by Net Applications that shows Windows 7 has significantly increased its share of the overall PC market since its launch. As of November 9 Windows 7 has 4% of the OS market.

The adoption rate among users is much higher than the adoption rate of Vista over the same period. Since its launch, Windows 7 has grown 84% in marketshare. It took Vista six months to claim 4% of the OS market when it launched. Net Applications reports that Windows OS' of all flavors own 92.5% of the OS market, a slight decline from 93.06% that it owned in August 2009. Linux owns 0.96% of the OS market with Mac owning 5.27%.

Microsoft is aggressively pushing the new operating system with discounts and promotional offers with retailers like Best Buy. The software giant is also trying to make upgrades from legacy operating systems like XP to Windows 7 easier since there is no direct upgrade path between the two OS'.

Microsoft has maintained that sales of Windows 7 will be largely tied to the sales of PCs moving forward, which have slumped due to the poor economy. The good news for Microsoft is that PC sales are currently growing with a 95% increase in the weeks before and after Windows 7 launched. This is the one spot where Vista holds an edge over Windows 7 – PC sales jumped 170% after Vista launched.