General enthusiasm. Gates released towards the end of May the Beta 2 for Windows Vista, and now it is available to all users.


But Microsoft wouldn't be Microsoft if it didn't remove yet another feature from the OS the company is releasing to catch up with Apple.

After removing numerous features from the operating system, including EFI booting and WinFS, Microsoft has stripped out another Vista component.

According to the Microsoft Watch, the company's officials said they cut PC-to-PC synchronization due to quality concerns, but the functionality will still be available to customers at some point.

"From the beginning, we have made it clear that the top priority for Windows Vista is quality. While PC to PC synch is a great feature that improves productivity and collaboration we don't have it at the quality level our customers demand. As a result the decision was made to remove it from Windows Vista," Microsoft Watch quoted a spokeswoman as saying.

PC-to-PC synchronization was removed prior to releasing the Beta 2 version. The feature would have allowed users to synch their files between systems running Vista.

After months of limited testing, Microsoft yesterday announced the public availability of the Beta 2.

The Beta 2 is available at this address.