Windows Vista's Industry Testing

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Following the release Friday of Microsoft Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1), Microsoft Corp. announced plans to make RC1 available for broad customer and partner testing. With this milestone, Microsoft is also communicating the U.S. estimated retail pricing for all Windows Vista editions. The announcements signal a major step for the technology industry toward the final availability of Windows Vista, currently targeted for volume license customers in November 2006 and general availability in January 2007.

Microsoft first made Windows Vista RC1 available to a small group of technical customers on Friday, Sept. 1, and plans to broadly release the code to current Windows Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP) participants this week. In addition, Microsoft will reopen the CPP, a popular pre-release testing program, to new enrollments in coming days. In total, Microsoft plans to make Windows Vista RC1 available to more than 5 million customers worldwide.

In conjunction with Release Candidate 1, Microsoft today announced U.S. estimated retail pricing for all editions of Windows Vista for both business and consumer users. Prices for the editions remain unchanged compared with the equivalent Windows XP editions, with the prices of some editions constant since Windows 95.

With Windows XP, customers often had to make tradeoffs in features and functionality as the Windows XP editions were aligned with specific hardware types. With Windows Vista, customers now have the ability to make choices between editions based on the valuable features they desire, which are now available as standard features of mainstream editions. For example, 64-bit support and Tablet PC and touch technology are standard features of the Home Premium and Business editions. Pricing information for all Windows Vista editions is available online, along with additional information on the various editions of Windows Vista.

Microsoft is broadening the scope of the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program, which began last quarter with the release of Windows Vista Beta 2. The CPP enables developers and IT professionals who do not have access to Windows Vista RC1 through other channels to obtain the code and begin testing. Also as part of the CPP, technology enthusiasts are able to obtain pre-release code and begin testing the various consumer scenarios Windows Vista enables. Current CPP participants are scheduled to have access to the RC1 code beginning this week, and Microsoft will be opening the CPP program to new participants in the following days. Microsoft will post RC1 to its MSDN and TechNet Web sites for subscriber download, and is working with publishers in various markets around the world to distribute RC1 DVDs to readers of a number of technology publications. In total, Microsoft estimates that 5 million users around the world will have access to Windows Vista RC1 across all distribution channels.

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