If Microsoft REALLY wants to target the gamers, they need to make a gaming version of their OS or at least sell the preferred version of their OS to gamers for a discount. If not I don’t see the warez kiddies jumping up and down for their product. They will just run to the nearest torrent site.

$99 profit from an OS that they would normally sell for $300 is still a profit.

$0 because warez kiddies like kazaa and bittorrent = not a fuckin penny for Redmond.

And when I mean gamer version I don't mean some POS washed down vista home version.

The only reason this thing will sell like hotcakes is because OEMs will bundle them with every new PC for the average noob joe, after which the rest of us will be forced to eventually use because it becomes the next standard platform. Nice and pretty OS screwed up because of heavy DRM, not to mention the expensive price tag, what a shame. Thank god for pirate edition.

I guess it makes sense. November Release to Manufacturing (RTM), December general availability (may be tight for retail shelves, but shouldn't be a problem for OEMs and a "launch".

General rule about software development: any date more than 3 months in the future is a guess; any date more than 6 months in the future is a wild-ass guess.

It's a little different with a product as massive as Vista because the beta process is so protracted and the after-RTM marketing and channel considerations are so massive that you have to tack on a month or two onto that rule of thumb (IOW to actually "ship" in November they have to be buttoned down by the end of summer or so). They also will be in serious triage mode, deferring minor issues and low-severity bugs to SP1 (which is why a lot of IT folks will evaluate a new OS but not deploy it until SP1 is out).

Newsflash: this blog post was sent backwards through a time warp. It was actually made the year that Duke Nukem Forever was released. :P