Microsoft Tuesday continued its march toward release of its Vista operating system with the announcement of pricing and plans to expand its testing program.
The price for Vista will range from $199 to $399 for retail versions and from $99 to $259 for upgrades from Windows XP.
The Vista Ultimate version, which includes all the business, mobility and home entertainment features, is priced at $399, while Vista Business is $299, Vista Home Premium is $239, and Vista Home Basic is $199.
Users upgrading from XP can get Ultimate for $259; Business for $199; Home Premium for $159; and Home Basic for $99.
Vista’s Enterprise version, which includes exclusive features such as BitLocker Drive Encryption, virtualization technology and Unix integration, is not on the price list and is only available to customers with Software Assurance maintenance contracts.
Microsoft also announced it hopes to have the first release candidate of Vista (RC1) in the hands of 5 million testers. RC1 was sent to a limited number of testers Sept. 1. Current members of Microsoft’s Customer Preview Program (CPP) will have access to RC1 this week.
Microsoft also said it would re-open registration for the CPP, with those new participants getting RC1 access in a few days.
Early recipients of the code are hoping for better stability than they saw in earlier versions as late as Beta 2, which last month was being criticized as too buggy and slow.
“RC1 is much faster,” said one tester who asked not to be identified. The tester says he hasn’t dug deeply into the code yet but says features he expected to be dropped are apparently included.
Microsoft is still hoping to hit its target ship date of November for volume licensing customers. In order to do that and incorporate feedback from RC1, the company is imploring users to test the code as quickly as they can.
“As soon as the build is out, download it, install it, test it, and file bugs,” Sven Hallauer, director of release management for Windows Vista, said in a podcast posted on the Microsoft Web site last week. “Time is of the essence. We have a feedback window of 2 to 3 weeks after RC1 release where we can really make changes to the product in terms of getting deeper into the product’s code base. Thereafter, we become very, very constrained in terms of what we can change without resetting the clock and slipping the release.”
Vista is slated for general release in January 2007.
