In an effort to get more customer feedback, Microsoft is releasing preview versions of its new Windows Vista operating system about once a month. The previews have appeared in September and October, with another expected for December.
"Our customers will have a feature-complete Windows Vista sooner in their hands than any previous Windows release," said Amitabh Srivastava, a corporate vice president in Microsoft's Windows unit, in a conference call.
With things release-wise still pretty much geared up for the second half of 2006, Microsoft is looking to focus on improving the reliability of Vista until the launch date. Vista will eventually launch five years after the release of the current version of Windows, Windows XP.