I latched onto a hush-hush series of e-mails last week. They were given to me by a source I have at Microsoft (and that's a first for me--having an anonymous source. Tres cool.) You can read the most interesting bits under the heading "Microsoft Spills the Beans," below.

Vista Takes a Rain Check

Vista's release date has been pushed back, maybe as late as January 2007. As someone once said, BFD. I mean, XP's running just fine on my PC, thanks. (Okay, I don't want to split hairs. Let's just make that running fine most of the time.)

You can get the gory details about the delay in IDG's "Windows Vista Release Pushed Back to January 2007."

One other thing about the delay: It appears there's been some head rolling (well, make that personnel reshuffling) at Microsoft, with a new VP taking over Windows development.

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Who's Saying What

Plenty of people have their knickers in a twist about the postponement.

In his blog, Harry McCracken, PC World's editor in chief, had lots to say about it, calling it a bombshell.

Two famous Windows authors (I can't give you their names because inside of a minute, I'd be on the outs with them [wink]) have to put their Vista writing chores on hold.

I had planned a PC World print column about Vista for September. That's on the back burner, though I think it's a good thing because now I can uninstall Vista and free up a test machine.

OTOH, the folks at Apple may be whistling a merry tune. That's Yardena ("call me Denny, willya?") Arar's take in "Windows Vista Delay: Good News for Apple?"

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Microsoft Spills the Beans

The e-mail discussion I got hold of includes Brian Valentine, a senior VP with Microsoft, and some guys who work for Microsoft. With the restructuring, I don't know what Valentine's new title is.

I didn't have room to run the whole e-mail thread here, so I posted it on my blog. Here's an excerpt:

From: Brian Valentine
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 8:47 PM
To: [names removed]
Subject: RE: Vista slips?????

I saw this thread and since I am responsible for shipping Vista, I thought I would clear up any confusion people might have.

[...]

The reason we did the adjustment at this time is that all of the channels need a very reliable date they can plan to sooner than later (it's the responsible thing to do) and after looking at the project in deep detail over the last few weeks - it was clear we needed a little more time in a few areas.

I have a saying: Customers will soon forget that you were 8 weeks late if you ship them a great product, but they will never forget if you ship them a bad product on time. Of course the best answer is to ship a great product on time - but if a tradeoff has to happen, the former is ALWAYS the right choice.

[...]

Feel free to ask me any questions, issues, etc you may have.

Brian

PS: [...] In my mind, the biggest question (which I expect to get pounded on) is how could these vulnerabilities (whatever they are) have made it this far into the development cycle, given that Vista was supposed to be designed "from the ground up" with security in mind????

Security is not just about vulnerabilities in the code. With Vista we have new things built in like parental controls, protected admin accounts, real standard user accounts, BitLocker for secure boot on a trusted processor, Low rights IE, anti-phishing, anti-malware (like spyware and viruses), Dynamic location awareness for the firewall so as you roam wireless networks - your ports don't stay open, etc (I could go on). [...] Delaying for security (as one of the things we wanted to take more time on) is about making the whole experience you get with Vista as secure as possible which includes making sure all of the things I listed and more work as promised and work very well together.

Learn More About Vista

If you're not up-to-speed on Vista, read Scott Spanbauer's "Vista Comes Into View," a comprehensive piece previewing the operating system.

BTW, don't miss Scott Dunn's "Windows Hacks: Registry Remedies." It's a gem of an article with tweaks for XP that I've never heard of before.

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Steve Bass writes PC World's monthly "Hassle-Free PC" column and is the author of PC Annoyances, 2nd Edition: How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Your Personal Computer, available from O'Reilly. He also writes PC World's daily Tips & Tweaks blog. Sign up to have Steve's newsletter e-mailed to you each week. Comments or questions? Send Steve e-mail.