Windows Vista is ready!

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Today (8th November) we are announcing the Release to Manufacturing of Windows Vista. This is a significant milestone for Microsoft and our partners, and one we are very excited about.

Windows Vista has achieved a number of remarkable firsts, a very small sampling of which includes:

· This is the first time we’ve supported a broad array of product skus to help address different customer segments – and they’re all supported using a single product image. The same DVD can be used to install any of the product images.

· It is truly a worldwide release. For the first time we released Windows simultaneously in 5 languages! In fact, French, Spanish, and Japanese signed off before English, which is also an amazing first. 18 languages will be available at the general launch in January. We will ship 32 language editions within 100 days of US English RTM. And when we’re done, Windows Vista will be available in over 100 languages.

· Windows Vista supports more hardware than ever. Hundreds of OEMs and thousands of systems builders will pre-install Windows Vista, which will have more than 50% more device drivers inbox at RTM than Windows XP had, plus thousands more will be on Windows Update before general availability.

· Windows Vista is the most tested release ever. This is the first Microsoft product that has incorporated the Secure Development Lifecycle from the beginning, and has employed stringent quality gates for each release milestone.

· We’ve had millions of downloads of the pre-release versions, and there are already over 60,000 machines at Microsoft running Windows Vista—more than any prior Windows release at RTM.

· This is the first time that customers will be able to deploy worldwide on diverse hardware all with a single IT-managed image. And it’s the first time that this image can be serviced offline.

· And because of the great improvements in deployment tools, it’s the first time that leading OEMs will be able to drive their mission-critical manufacturing process for building and configuring machines using only inbox tools. Windows Vista deploys Windows Vista!

· Windows Vista is the fastest installing version of Windows when installing on then current generation hardware. Install times of Windows Vista on normal desktop class hardware regularly clock in at between 15 and 20 minutes.