Microsoft to Ship Vista on November 30

CNET has reported that Microsoft has confirmed it will be shipping its latest versions of Office 2007 and Windows Vista to US businesses on 30th November. The new software suites will be officially unveiled at an event in New York by Steve Ballmer, the current CEO of Microsoft.

This release marks the end of a long struggle by Microsoft to get its next-generation products out to its consumers. Windows Vista has been in development for nearly 6 years, and has missed multiple release dates over the years as rival OSs like Apple and Linux have grown from strength to strength.

Apple in particular has found more takers, due to its fairly robust security and next generation UI which has pretty much become the standard to emulate for OS developers. Microsoft Office in comparison has had a quiet time as it has headed towards a release. It did run into rough weather with Adobe when Microsoft offered a ‘Save as PDF’ option in one of its recent betas. Microsoft was forced to remove the option and offer it as a separate download.

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In order to garner consumer interest in its new products, Microsoft decided to release limited editions of both Office and Windows Vista to users resulting in millions of downloads. In recent times, it has mentioned that it will be offering upgrade coupons, to new PC purchasers which will allow current XP users to move to the new OS at a fraction of the cost.