Its time again - for another major release of Windows, this time around after quite a long gap. And Boy is this release gonna rock the boat! This time is special for me in more than just one way - Its nice to see the release fall through from the inside - from being a (Micro)softie myself. Now is an exciting time to be a part of Microsoft, almost every part of the company thats been working on its biggest software release ever comes together to evaluate what they've built and if its ready to be incorported into the operating system in any fashion or not. I've been lucky to be involved in two such areas the SDK and the other which I can't speak of yet.

 

The most exciting part is to see all the various pieces being made that will go into the Operating System coming together and all status-es going green.  It’s happening for real, we soon will be GO for Launch! Some of these green lights are even visible outside of the company - The new Windows Media Player 11 has RTWed, IE7 which will ship with Windows Vista has RTW for example.

 

A reliability study that just ended with a little over a 1000 Microsoft employees has yielded good results so far - Exciting times! I think this is bigger than NASA! This Windows release will impact the life's of more people than anything ever before. We've made sure that the software is rock solid and you have a great experience when we ship it! Ofcourse as with any major release there will be initial glitches - keep throwing the stones at us when you hit a problem and we will be there to fix it for you.

This is only the beginning - Windows Vista is only the platform for the next generation of Software and Services (and I like to call this out explicitly - GAMES! :) ) - The NYTimes Reader (http://firstlook.nytimes.com/index.php?cat=4) is just an example of the kind of Software you can expect to see on the new platform - look forward to be amazed by more such software and services coming in the next few weeks and months. Windows Vista will sure rock the boat!!

...and oh BTW by the time you read this - you are already almost 5 minutes closer to the Launch of Windows Vista! :)