May 24, 2006 on 11:19 am

Microsoft Corporation released the Beta 2 of its Windows Vista operating system Tuesday, moving a step closer to the final launch of the next generation operating system. The company has made the latest version available to some 500,000 to 750,000 developers and IT professionals around the world for testing. Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division, said Vista, which was originally scheduled for shipment this year-end, remained on track for a planned November release to enterprise customers. The version for PCs will be available in retail in early 2007.

Early evaluations of the second test version indicated that there is not much change from the initial beta released last summer. However, the company claimed it has improved on several of the system’s functionalities and added new features. It said, for example, Vista will have three faces, depending on both the hardware capabilities of the PCs and which of the six core versions of the OS (four for consumers, two for businesses) a user is opting for. .

The company said the Aero interface, with its semi-transparent frames and glistening progress bars, will be displayed on PCs with sufficiently robust hardware that run either one of the two corporate-focused versions—Vista Business and Vista Enterprise—or one of the top-of-the-line consumer-oriented Vista Home Premium and Vista Home Ultimate. Low-end PCs opting for the Vista Home Basic or Vista Starter editions will get a basic interface. However, if the PC is capable of Aero graphics, then a standard interface will be available, which will offer some basic Aero features. Vista is also incorporating a new Microsoft document format called XPS (XML Paper Specification). XPS documents can be shared between people who have XPS viewer.