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Briefly: Vista can't thwart Mac's reign at No. 1 online retailer

Microsoft Corp's first major operating system release in over half a decade has seemingly done little to spur PC sales at the Internet's largest online retailer, where Macs continue to dominate sales charts.

Two days after the consumer release of Windows Vista, Apple's Mac line of personal computers handily maintained its lead atop Amazon.com's best selling "Computers & PC Hardware" sales chart.

In all, Macs accounted for 7 out of the top 8 sales slots on the hourly-updated rankings, including the top 5 spots. The top-selling Vista-enabled PC was a 13-inch Sony VIAO notebook, which captured the 6th spot. Vista notebook offerings from Toshiba and HP followed, filling the 9th and 10th spots, respectively.

The Mac's stamina of late is also evident in ongoing market research trends for operating system usage. According to data released Thursday by Net Applications, the percent of Internet users running Apple's Mac OS X operating system rose for the sixth consecutive month to 6.22 percent in January. The Mac's share is up nearly 2 percent since July.

At the same time, usage of Microsoft's top five flavors of Windows has declined at nearly the same rate. The Redmond-based company saw its share of the OS market wither, slightly, from just over 95 percent in August to about 93 percent in January.

Meanwhile, Vista, whose presence on the net thus far has comprised primarily of beta versions, captured a mere 0.18 percent share in January.