Windows Vista Released to Manufacturing

Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system is released to manufacturing this week and will be broadly available as a stand-alone product or preinstalled on new PCs on January 30, 2007.

Last month Microsoft started Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Program, allowing people buying certain Windows Vista certified laptops and desktops from October 26 2006 until March 26 2007 with Windows XP preloaded to get a voucher for a free or discounted upgrade to Windows Vista.

To install Windows Vista you must have a computer with at least 800MHz processor, a minimum 512 MB of main memory, and a DirectX 9 capable graphics processor. But, to get full Windows Vista experience, including the Windows Aero user interface, you must have Premium Ready PC with minimum 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor, 1 GB of main memory, support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory, Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel and a 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.

In the first year of release, Vista will be installed on more than 100 million computers worldwide, Reuters reports according to research firm IDC. Windows is already installed on more than 90 percent of the world’s computers.

Also, Microsoft will host a series of events around the world on November 30 to officially recognize business availability of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Exchange Server 2007 and Windows Vista.

Here is a simplified list of Vista versions.

Q&A: Windows Vista Released to Manufacturing