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Microsoft may delay Windows Vista (again), firm says

Microsoft Corp. may be forced to delay the release of its much anticipated Windows Vista operating system upgrade by at least three more months, analysts for Gartner said this week.

\"Microsoft’s track record is clear; it consistently misses target dates for major operating system releases,\" a group of the firm\'s analysts wrote in a research note sent to clients on Monday.

The analysts said the major Windows overhaul — the first since Windows XP was released nearly half a decade ago — is too complex and feature-burdened to meet the software maker\'s release target of November for corporate customers and January for consumers.

Instead, Gartner believes widespread availability of Vista will not materialized until the April calendar quarter, which runs till June. \"Based on Microsoft\'s current schedule, we would expect the schedule to slip again, with broad availability not coming before 2Q07, nine to 12 months after Beta 2 ships, assuming Beta 2 is reasonably stable and feature-complete,\" the analysts wrote.

Internally, Beta 2 will represent the second major test release of Vista, and also stand to signify that a certain level of quality has been attained, Gartner said.

In the research note, the firm notes that Windows XP took only five months to go from Beta 2 status in March 2001 to manufacturing in August of the same year. But the analysts said that \"was a relatively minor release built on Windows 2000 and cannot compare to the magnitude of change from Windows XP to Windows Vista.\"

By comparison, it took the Redmond, Wash.-based company 16 months from the time it released Windows 2000 Beta 2 in August 1998 till the software shipped in December of 1999.

Microsoft\'s \"original\" plan called for Windows Vista to be released in 2005. The company later pushed the release to 2006 before announcing in March that the software would not ship in time for the critical 2006 holiday shopping season.

\"Microsoft’s development organization firmly believes that it will release Windows Vista to manufacturing in October or November 2006, in time to ship to enterprises with volume licensing in 2006 and for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to ship on new PCs in January 2007,\" Gartner analysts added. \"However, development also believed it could do it in time for 2006 holiday availability, and that did not materialize.\"

In response to Gartner\'s report, Microsoft on Tuesday issued a statement reaffirming its claim that Vista remains on track for the the November/January time frames.

Meanwhile, Apple Computer has publicly vowed to release the next major update to its Mac OS X operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, in late 2006 or early 2007.

Updated: 10:22 pm ET