Ed Bott

VNUnet.com is reporting that a Microsoft staffer in France has revealed the projected release dates of IE7 and Windows Vista:

“Beta 2 of Windows Vista, Microsoft’s future operating system, is slated for release in the first week of December 2005 at best,” a posting dated 29 August said. “The final release has been pushed back until September or October 2006.”

This comes shortly after a similar post in Windows IT Pro earlier this week, which was reportedly gleaned from “very recent internal Microsoft documentation.”

It’s reasonable to expect the final release of IE7 and the Beta 2 release of Windows Vista to be in sync, probably in early December, before the developers leave for the holidays. And you can expect Microsoft to do whatever it takes to have the operating system ready for release to large system builders by August 2006. If they miss that date, they miss the crucial fourth-quarter holiday buying season. Of course, there’s a lot of wiggle room in the definition of “released” – do you mean the date when the code is signed off as final? It can be weeks or even months before shrink-wrapped copies appear in retail outlets, but unlike the halcyon days of Windows 95, retail sales are just a drop in the bucket. The big market is in copies preloaded on new computers.

When I see stories like this, I assume that the leaks were deliberate and that the reporters in question were specifically targeted to pass the information along without a lot of filtering. A “leak” gets a lot more publicity than a press release, and it also gives Microsoft the opportunity to change its schedule later without too many recriminations. This isn’t an “official” schedule, after all, and in fact the VNUnet story specifically notes that a spokesperson refused to confirm or deny it.