Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system has been released subsequent to it's final delay. After clearly pinpointing the holiday season of 2006 for launch, the company had to revise their primary launch period to 2007.

Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division, told analysts that the target time has been bumped to January 2007 for all consumer versions of Windows. He also said that editions aimed at business users would be available as early as November through volume licensing programs.

"We needed just a few more weeks," Allchin said in a conference call. In a press release, he said "the industry requires greater lead time to deliver Windows Vista on new PCs during holiday. We must optimize for the industry, so we've decided to separate business and consumer availability."

Allchin's comments indicated that the company wanted time to address the last remaining security enhancements to the OS, and that the delay would allow time for all of Microsoft's partners to get on board.

"We're trying to crank up the security level higher than ever," he said. "This came down to a few weeks. We are trying to do the responsible thing here... Maybe in the past we would have just gone ahead but now we're not going to do that."

The delay should have no real effect on Microsoft's fiscal year, which ends in June. It may affect early market share numbers for Vista, however, as some 33 percent of computers are supposedly sold during this time of year. A holiday launch would have likely resulted in the majority of those computers being installed with Windows Vista.

Vista launches in full with five major versions of the OS.

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