Although the Redmond Company has reiterated its commitment to ship Vista on the announced dates, analysts are looking at the forecasted dates with skepticism, after experiencing repeated delays from the software giant. Recently Microsoft has even placed a $900 million bet of the November and January dead-lines. The sum is meant to finance the marketing efforts for Windows Vista, Office 2007 suite and Xbox360 in the FY07.

And while the market's view is that Vista will be further delayed until the second quarter of 2007, Microsoft representatives are stating otherwise. A discordant note to their synchronous reports makes only Bill Gates that has admitted to a 20% chance that Microsoft's latest OS won't ship in January.

Recently Microsoft's CFO Chris Liddell has estimated that another such delay will take its toll on the company. The US software giant stands to lose an estimated $400 million if the Vista launching date is further pushed back. In such an event Microsoft will be able only to mend its wounds and try to limit the losses somewhere around $200 million. Liddell failed to mention if the potential $400 million in loses are a part of the 9 billion Microsoft investment in the products or if the sum represents part of the $900 million marketing push.

The Redmond Company has predicted that it will face Vista modest revenues following the January launch partly because of multi-year license renewals for which Microsoft has already cashed in.