As promised yesterday and after 5 years of development, Vista is finally finished.

Jim Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft’s Platforms & Services Division has put together a video about the announcement where he announces the General Availability (GA) date of 30 January 2007 for Vista.

Nick White, product manger in Windows client also had this to share with Neowin readers:

“Ultimately, we never could have achieved this milestone without you, the enthusiast community, who have played a key role in making this the highest-quality, most secure, most reliable and most usable version of Windows the world has ever seen. You gave us unprecedented support in testing and providing your feedback while we designed, developed and refined Windows Vista — so much so that it has in many ways become a reflection of your involvement.”

Availability of the RTM code on MSDN is still not known officially with a Microsoft spokesperson citing “within 7 days” after todays announcement. Given MSDN has scheduled down time from 7PM PST to 9PM PST on Friday, November 10th - I’d expect it to arrive shortly after that.

Expect exclusive RTM ship party photographs shortly.

Source: Neowin.net

The mass upgrade process has begun, the Automatic Update is now offering Windows Internet Explorer 7 as download:

This free upgrade to Internet Explorer for genuine Windows customers offers improvements such as: enhanced security to help protect you from malicious software and fraudulent websites; a cleaner look, including tabs for browsing multiple pages in one window; features to make everyday tasks such as printing and searching the web easier.  This upgrade preserves your current home page, search settings, favorites, and compatible toolbars, and can be uninstalled if you decide to do so.

More information for this update can be found at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=71727

Size: 14.8 MB

A source close to Microsoft has confirmed to me that Windows Vista will in fact carry the build number 6.0.6000. He found this out by receiving a mail with the build stamp “Microsoft Windows Mail 6.0.6000.16384″ so that ends that speculation.

Also the MSDN subscription page has been updated with the following information

Windows Vista and Office 2007: Availability on MSDN Subscriber Downloads
Windows Vista and Office 2007 will be available through MSDN Subscriber downloads within 7 days of release to manufacture (RTM). MSDN Subscriptions is committed to making new content available to our subscribers as soon as is practical.

Looks like we’ll be seeing this appear soon.

Update: Several key Microsoft employees has firmly stated that Vista has not been released to manufacturing. The day might be soon, but is certainly not today, or tomorrow. There’s still a bit more work to do. Build 6000.16384 is real, but it also doesn’t mean RTM. These days, Microsoft doesn’t have to increase the major version number when building, so theoretically, any sub-set of build 6000 (6000.16385, 16386, etc…) can be RTM.

Soruce: Neowin.net

Microsoft today revealed the retail packaging for Windows Vista and Office 2007, the eagerly awaited new products to be made widely available in early 2007. The boxes boast a completely revised and redesigned packaging. Writing on the Windows Vista Team Blog, Nick White said:

“Designed to be user-friendly, the new packaging is a small, hard, plastic container that’s designed to protect the software inside for life-long use. It provides a convenient and attractive place for you to permanently store both discs and documentation.

The new design will provide the strength, dimensional stability and impact resistance required when packaging software today. Our plan is to extend this packaging style to other Microsoft products after the launch of Windows Vista and 2007 Office system.”

Source: Neowin.net

This is hillarious, James Senior (Microsoft Technical Specialist) has revealed the highly anticipated sounds of Windows Vista.

“So over the weekend I installed a nice shiney RTM build and the sounds have been upgraded from the ones in XP to the new creations by Robert Fripp. I’d thought I would share some of these with you and I’ve compiled them in this mp3 which you can download and listen to below.

The sounds I cover are the following:

• Critical Stop
• ReadyBoost drive inserted
• Windows UAC control prompt
• New e-mail notification
• Low Battery Alarm
• Exclamation
• Windows Start
• Exit Windows\”

Don’t say we didn’t warn you

Source: blogs.technet.com

Looks as though PodTech (Robert Scoble anyone?) sat down with Matt Jubelirer, product manager of the Zune program and got a 40 minute video out of it. The video runs through the Zune in detail and really gives a nice overview of Microsoft’s answer to the iPod. (PodTech has an awesome demo of Cisco’s new TelePresence 3000 system as well over here if you’re into Video Conferencing)

Video weighs in at around 120 Megs, but well worth the download if you’re considering buying one, on or after, November 14th.

View: PodTech: Indepth Look at the Zune
View: Zune Details (Wikipedia) | ZuneInsider Blog

IEBLOG: In the first four days over three million of you have already downloaded the final release. Thank you! (If you’re not one of those three million, you can get it here.)We expect the numbers to continue to climb steadily until we start distributing via Automatic Updates in a few weeks.

Clearly, we expect IE7 adoption to really take off then. If you haven’t tested your website with IE7 yet, please use the tools Scott posted about a few weeks ago to help you prepare.With the final release, we got a chance to do some fun tech community activities. For instance, on the night of the launch, we hosted a dinner in San Francisco for about twenty leaders in the local blogging community.

Afterwards, Jeremiah Owyang posted his thoughts and Thomas Hawk put up a great set of photos. We also finally let our product managers do some real marketing. We have the first IE radio spot that I can remember us doing, and we created some Mobile billboards that cruised through 10 major U.S. cities.Source: IE Blog via Bink

Mozilla has just officially launched Firefox 2.0! Although the final release was posted to their FTP servers earlier today, Mozilla waited until around 17:30 EST to put the official launch site up.

New features include:
Visual Refresh: Firefox 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability without altering the familiarity of the browsing experience.
Built-in phishing protection: Phishing Protection warns users when they encounter suspected Web forgeries, and offers to return the user to their home page.
Improved tabbed browsing: By default, Firefox will open links in new tabs instead of new windows, and each tab will now have a close tab button.
Inline spell checking: A new built-in spell checker enables users to quickly check the spelling of text entered into Web forms
Spread Firefox coordinator Asa Dotzler commented on the release in his blog:

“Two years ago an amazing community of Firefox contributors set the world on fire (and not in that Sony battery way) with the release of Firefox 1.0. One year ago, when we came together and pushed Firefox 1.5 into the mainstream, proving that we were a force to be reckoned with. Today, with the release if Firefox 2, we’re setting a new standard for user safety, control, and fun on the Web.”

Download: Mozilla Firefox 2.0 (Win32, en-us) | Other Operating Systems/Languages

An interesting trivial article about the 10 biggest computer flops of all time including:

The Xerox Alto
NeXT computer
IBM PCjr
Apple Newton
Apple 3
Apple Lisa
Microsoft Windows ME
Microsoft Bob
IBM OS/2
Gary Kildall’s CP/M

Source: www.miguelcarrasco.net

There are confirmed reports that Windows Vista build 5808 has been released to TAP (Technology Adoption Program) customers, it has also been suggested that testers will not get this build on Connect and it’s unclear if this is a pre-RTM build shipped as such. Interesting to note is that 57xx was designated the RTM branch, there is no further information on a 5744 to 58xx jump, or what it implies.

Jim Allchin cleared up conflicting reports to eWeek by saying that Windows Vista would not make RTM this week, adding that there was still work to do “We won’t RTM (release to manufacturing) in a week,” Allchin told MJ Foley on October 18. “We are in pretty good shape. And there are still months before (the January 2007) launch.”

Source: The Vista.ru