While Bill Gates has made reference to another possible delay of Windows Vista, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has another position on the matter. Ignoring Bill's more realistic stand and the prefiguration of another postponed deadline, Ballmer has reinstated Vista's launch date. He also added Internet Explorer version 7, Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 to his list of promises that together with Vista will bundle to create a complete core platform. In this regard, Ballmer's behavior was what it was expected of him, moreover since he was addressing the participants at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Boston.

Not only this, but Ballmer also promised that Microsoft will step up the rhythm of future development and releases of operating systems, and that the six year gap that separates XP and Vista will be an exception. "Rest assured we will never have a gap between Windows releases as long as the one between XP and Windows Vista," said Ballmer. "Count on it. I could go through the history of how we got here. Just count on it -- we will never have this kind of gap again."

In this regard, Microsoft has charged Steven Sinofsky, a former Microsoft Office executive to oversee future development products within strict deadlines.