Vista is not on track to be released to manufacturing on October 25, according to Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's platforms and services division.

"We won't RTM (release to manufacturing) in a week," Allchin told MJ Foley on October 18. "We are in pretty good shape. And there are still months before (the January 2007) launch."

Allchin said Microsoft is looking at Vista across five categories right now to determine whether it's RTM-ready.

The five: Reliability, security, performance, driver coverage and application compatibility. While some of these categories — such as driver coverage and app compatibility — may not be as robust as many would expect in order for Vista to RTM, Microsoft looks at things a bit differently, Allchin said.

"We have to be done with Vista before the ecosystem can finish the rest," Allchin said.

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