Sources from within the Redmond Company have confirmed another delay of the launching date of Office 2007, pushing it to the end of 2006, rather than October, a dead-line announced at the in beginning of the year. Microsoft's move aims at joining the releases of Office 2007 suite with that of Vista at a coincidental point, because the retail versions of the Office suite will not be available on the market earlier that January 2007, even if the product is shipped starting with December. The software giant claims that the delay comes as a consequence of the feedback it has received, Microsoft managing and incorporating information from no less that 2.5 million beta testers.

"Based on internal testing and the beta 2 feedback around product performance, we are revising our development schedule to deliver the 2007 system release by the end of year 2006, with broad general availability in early 2007," a Microsoft representative said in an e-mail. "Feedback on quality and performance will ultimately determine the exact dates."

The recent delay comes just one month after, Steve Balmer, Microsoft CEO has mentioned the possibility that the final version of Windows Vista may not be available to the wide audience until after January 2007.