These come from Paul Thurrott who has many connections with Microsoft so they may be more than rumors but I feel a need to disclose that to any of you that might be making purchasing decisions based on complete strangers blog…. and if you are, I demand consulting fees from you! Make checks payable to Vlad…

Windows Vista

….Microsoft is planning to ship Windows Vista Beta 2 in late 2005, not in early 2006.

According to internal documentation, Vista Beta 2 is scheduled to be “feature complete” by September 29, 2005. Then, Vista Beta 2 will enter lockdown mode between October and November 9, 2005. After that date, Vista Beta 2 will be in escrow and will ship on December 7, 2005, about 3 weeks later.

What about post-Beta 2? According to a second set of documentation viewed yesterday, Microsoft will ship Vista Release Candidate 0 (RC0) on April 19, 2006, and Windows Vista RC1 on June 28, 2006. Microsoft currently plans to release Vista to manufacturing on August 9, 2006, and make the product broadly available by November 15, 2006.

Longhorn Server

Except for the release to manufacturing (RTM) date, all the Vista dates apply to Longhorn Server as well. But once we reach summer 2006, Longhorn Server will fork from the Vista client release schedule. We’ll see an RC2 release of Longhorn Server on October 18, 2006, and the RTM release on January 10, 2007, according to the latest documentation.

That’s a much earlier release date than previously anticipated.

WinFS

Microsoft surprised a lot of people by shipping WinFS Beta 1 yesterday (see more at source), and as it turns out, the project is suddenly well ahead of schedule. In the more recent schedule, WinFS Beta 1 will be followed by at least one Community Technology Preview (CTP) release, which is currently due February 15, 2006. Then, on May 1, 2006, Microsoft will release WinFS Beta 2. Beta 3 is currently scheduled for November 15, 2006, with a Beta 3 Refresh release expected in April 2007. WinFS is currently scheduled for RTM in third quarter 2007, well after Longhorn Server.

SQL Server 2005

SQL Server 2005 will ship within months. On September 13, 2005, the first day of the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2005, Microsoft will announce that SQL Server 2005 has hit the RC1 milestone, and the company will place the code into escrow in anticipation of the final release. The English language version of SQL Server 2005 is currently expected to RTM on October 14, 2005, about 3 weeks before its public launch. Other language versions will ship in December 2006 and January 2007.

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