Update December 06, 2006

Windows Vista and Office 2007 to be on retail shelves by January 2007.

Update October 31, 2006

"9 Days Until Vista RTM!!!" read a scrolling electronic reader board in a building on Microsoft's Redmond campus Monday.

People are guessing RTM build numbers of 5900 and 6000.

Update September 2, 2005

Microsoft has revealed the projected release dates of Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 in a phone conversation with vnunet.com's French sister publication SVM, the publication claims.

"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."

Beta 2 of IE 7 is set for September 2005 followed by the release of the final version in December, the story continues. The product launch will coincide with Vista beta 2. Vista beta 1 was released to testers in July.

A spokeswoman at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond would neither confirm nor deny the report.

Update 31st Jul 2005

Microsoft has pushed back the release date for Windows Vista to the end of 2006.

Market experts believe that this should mean that Vista should be out at around Thanksgiving holiday, which comes on the last Thursday in November, or Christmas, at the end of December.

 Microsoft confirmed that it will deliver the beta 1 version of Longhorn Server on August 3, along with the beta 1 release Internet Explorer 7. They'll be available along with the beta 1 version of Windows Vista, the next-generation Windows formerly known as Longhorn, which Microsoft announced friday morning.

Schedule #1

Windows Vista Beta 1: July 27, 2005 (limited public beta August 3, 2005)
Windows Vista Beta 2: November 16, 2005
Windows Vista RC 0: March 17, 2006
Windows Vista RTM: June 28, 2006

Schedule #2

Windows Vista Beta 1 code complete: March 16, 2005
Windows Vista Beta 1 internal release and domain rollout: April 2005
Windows Vista Beta 2 (and product) code complete: July 1, 2005
Windows Vista Beta 2 internal release: Q3 2005
Windows Vista Beta 2 public release: September 2005 (PDC 2005)
Windows Vista Release Candidate 0 (RC0) internal release: Q4 2005
Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1) internal release: March 2006
Windows Vista release to manufacturing (RTM): May 2006