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Speaking at the Most Valuable Professional Global Summit in Seattle, Ballmer resisted calls for a slimmed down Windows 7: "Vista is bigger than XP and it's gonna stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn't get bigger still."

However, Ballmer went on to admit that it had taken too long to get Vista out the door

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and admitted it had caused problems: "Vista is a very important piece of work, and I think we did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from.

"Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases... because it turns out many things become problematic when you have those long release cycles. The design point, what you should be targeting, we can never let that happen again. We had some things that we can't just set the dial back that I think people wish we could."

Ballmer also struck a conciliatory tone over Windows XP, which the company recently announced would still be available on low cost laptops such as the Eee PC: "We have a lot of customers using Vista, and we have a lot of customers that are choosing to stay with Windows XP, and as long as those are both important options, we will be sensitive, and we will listen, and we will hear that."