Today, Microsoft announced the latest sales benchmark figures for Windows 7. Having hit the 150 million mark, the company claims on its Windows Team Blog that it is the fastest selling OS in history. There's no split between retail.

And enterprise licenses, so we don't know how good uptake really is among upgraders. One stat from Microsoft is that 12% of PCs are now running Windows 7, meaning there are still well over a billion machines to go. Is there going to a prize for the last XP user on the planet when they upgrade?

Microsoft is releasing a collection of new betas of its Live accessory software (you know, the stuff that used to come free with the OS, and is now an optional download, with the advantage that they get updated more often than stuff that's built into the OS). There are improved versions of Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer and Mail with improved features for no-budget multimedia types.

There's also a new version of Messenger (which is also available for the iPhone), the Windows 7 version now helps connect to your SkyDrive web-storage and social networking sites to help tie all your social data together. This link should be live by the time you read this so you can try out all the new gear.