New Vista build touts Media Center improvements

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 18 July 2006 19:57

Your IT - Home IT

Microsoft has announced another interim build release of its long awaited Windows Vista operating system. Among the more important enhancements, Build 5472 touts improvements in the loading time of Windows Media Center and easier user account management.

Despite rumours, hints and speculation that the release date of Windows Vista is going to be delayed yet again, there has been no announcement from Microsoft that the general release date of January 2007.

However, the fact that the release of Office 2007 has slipped beyond January 2007 to "early 2007" has given rise to the belief that Vista will follow suit. After all, Microsoft itself has intimated in the past that it wants to time the release of both products so that they coincide.

Five years is a long time between major product releases. It is hard to believe that Microsoft would want to dilute the launches of Vista and Office 2007 by making them separate events, rather than one big bang extravaganza.

As market analysts have said, with the sort of dominance that Microsoft has in the desktop market, the software giant can afford to wait a couple of extra months to get everything humming perfectly for a joint product release. Bill Gates himself said he would rather delay Vista than release an unfinished product.

Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to shrug off annoyances such as the recent fine in the EU, the Symantec lawsuit and Adobe's refusal to allow Office 2007 to have a save to PDF function. The costs associated with these matters, though significant, are relatively minor to the revenues that will be generated by Vista and Office 2007 in their first year.