No not saying that John. The "official word" has been as you've said. A
lot of "educated speculation" in the ezines and media is that there could be
further holdup. Many Windows VPs (there seem to be an endless roster of
them) have refused to answer whether there could be more delay. I
personally view all delay as good. There have been a number of mods as you
know to the original Vista. Win FS probably the most publicized and
discussed in web forums. Apparently .pdf and .xms will be downloadable
rather than natively included (lastest I'm hearing). I suspect that
whenever the releases--Office and Vista will release on exactly the same
dates but it's just my guess.
I always remember that this is "Jim Allchin's last hurrah in the sense that
although he will always be very connected (no puns) he has been the
supervisory force and architect of Windows OS's and servers. Allchin
started out in a poor farming family, dropped out of the engineering program
at the University of Florida to start a career in bands, went back to
school, Florida and then got his degree from Stanford, worked for Texas
Instruments and got his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Ga. Tech. From then
on he was the principle architect of diverse operating systems at different
companies.
Jim Allchin interview on Vista and Longhorn Servers
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=63208
I see Allchin as a driving force to want to get things very right in this
OS. Having said that, I think his product managers possibly feeling
pressure from Sinofsky wanting trains to run on time whether the cars are
quality or not are trying to just phone many features in without fixing
them.
I know that Ed Bott--a good blog to read--is glad to have the time to work
on Vista Inside Out MSFT Press--and I'm glad he'll make it better because I
will learn more. I have n oticed in the Vista books now showing up in
stores, much information that MSFT refuses to publish anywhere on their
sites. I try to make it a point to monitor the Longhorn Vista blogs from
Technet and MSDN and MSDN and Technet as it relates to Vista and there is
not all that much there.
CH