Windows Vista goes gold

Peter Galli The code for Windows Vista was released to manufacturing on November 8, Jim Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft's platforms and services division, has just announced in a media teleconference.

The team had signed off on the final code at around 10am PT November 8, Allchin said, confirming that Vista will be made available to its volume license customers on November 30 and to consumers on January 30, 2007.

"This is a good day. Vista is rock solid and we are ready to ship. This is a significant milestone for Microsoft and our partners. The RTM signifies the next phase for Windows Vista: our development work is done and now the progress begins for the PC and device manufacturers and software developers to finalize the work on their products and applications," he said.

All the Vista SKU's will be available on a single DVD for the first time, and the product will be available in 5 languages at release, which is two more than when Windows XP was launched five years ago.

"The French, Spanish and Japanese versions were, in fact, signed off before English. That is a first for us. The product will also be available in 18 languages by the January release time, with more than a hundred language versions released eventually," he said.

Microsoft would also have 50 percent more device driver support at release than XP ever had, Allchin said, adding that he was proud of what the team had achieved with the product, particularly on the security front.

Allchin reconfirmed that he will be leaving the software giant at the end of January, at which time he will be replaced by Steve Sinofsky, who has headed the Office team until now, and who will then lead the Windows and Windows Live groups, with broad responsibility for planning future versions of Windows.

eWeek Labs has also posted a blog item on Vista's RTM, as well as a slideshow that walks you through the new operating system.