Microsoft has come out of the first weekend of selling Windows 8 with some pretty good numbers. Steve Ballmer has announced that Microsoft has sold over 4 million Windows 8 upgrades so far. This is impressive and is almost keeping pace with the numbers that the iPhone 5 achieved in its first weekend.

Important to note is that these numbers do not include sales to partners who have purchased the operating system to pre-install on systems heading out the door new. These numbers are only counting those users who have purchased an upgrade of their own volition and out of their own interest in using the new operating system.

It's actually a good thing that system builder numbers are not included as these would be a poor way to judge consumer demand. If these were included, the number would be artificially high as the partners are just buying the operating system so as to offer the latest and greatest to their customers.