Vista is close… but no cigar

“RC1 is in the best shape of anything they have shipped for Vista, but in the old nomenclature I would call this at best a Beta Three and not a Release Candidate One,” said Mike Cherry, lead Windows analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a newsletter in Kirkland, Wash. “I am always skeptical of a plan that is so good that you know that you are only going to have a single release candidate and then get to golden or release quality code. Instead I think they will do a second release candidate at a minimum and finish up or release to manufacturing sometime in December.”

Even with the vast improvements over the past few months, it looks like Vista is just not meant to hit its January launch date. Surprising? No. It is quite hard to get excited for a buggy operating system at this point.