Microsoft will introduce Vista between in the week of 2 October, it has been revealed. The next generation operating system, set to replace Windows XP, will be released at that time. Seemingly, the February beta of Vista concludes the beta phase for the new OS. Now, Microsoft will launch two release candidates RC0 and RC1, which are due in the week of April 10 and June 26.

Microsoft apparently will miss some expectations of a third quarter release of Windows Vista. Sources told TG Daily that Microsoft is aiming for a global rollout in the first week of October (2 - 6 October). At launch date, Microsoft will also introduce DirectX9L (formerly named Windows Graphics Framework 1.0), the Vista upgrade for the multimedia driver, as well as DirectX 10 (WGF 2.0) and the Media Center Edition (MCE) of Vista. An update for DirectX (v10.1) will be released in the second half of 2007.