The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has canceled the countdown to the launch of Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista. However, this cancellation is not complete as it is only valid for the duration of 2007. But with this decision, NASA is just the latest federal agency to postpone upgrading their desktops to Windows Vista. According to NASA's decision, Windows Vista upgrades have been put on hold until 2008.

Taking the course of no Vista upgrades, NASA joined both The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a duo of federal agencies that have already postponed deploying Windows Vista across their organizations.

Microsoft has disputed claims that Windows Vista upgrades are banned. In this regard, the Redmond Company is offering its own perspective, revealing that postponing Vista upgrades is part of the testing period of the new operating system across the environments of the organizations that are getting ready to adopt the platform.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, denied that Windows Vista is experiencing a slow uptake at the level of corporations. Ballmer even went as far as to say that Vista adoption has a similar rate to that of previous versions of the Windows operating system.

"There's a testing period, a validation period, etc., that people do go through," Ballmer explained. "I actually want to take a little exception -- you can speak for NASA, but as the executive sponsor on a number of federal government accounts, Vista certainly has been anything but banned from most parts of the U.S. federal government. There are places where people are not using it today, that's for sure. But certainly I'm involved with a number of accounts where I expect to see fairly brisk and early adoption."

NASA's over 60,000 PCs will begin the transition to Windows Vista starting in January 2008, and following the release of the first service pack for the operating system.