Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista will be absenting from the IT infrastructure built around 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. For the next year's Olympic Games, Windows Vista has lost the race to its predecessor operating system Windows XP. Xie Long, director of Olympic sponsorship for Lenovo's Olympic Business Department has confirmed that Vista failed to qualify for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo is one of the official sponsors of the August 2008, Olympic Games and as such, will deliver desktops, notebooks and servers to the sporting celebration. However, Windows XP will be the start operating system of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, despite the fact that Microsoft and Lenovo recently inked an agreement worth over $1 billion over the pre-installing of Windows Vista on the Chinese manufacturer's machines.

Xie Long explained that Windows Vista was not even considered as a choice for the operating system that will support the IT architecture of the games, according to a report from ZDNetAsia. The reason for this is simple and involves the fact that Lenovo had put the finishing touches on all the details of its contribution to the Olympic Games since 2004, when Vista was still Longhorn.

Having Windows Vista as an integer part of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China would have been equivalent to a marketing success for Microsoft, but the Redmond Company has managed to miss the opportunity with the repeated delays of its operating system, which hit the shelves on January 30, 2007.

Out of the 300 servers, 800 desktops and 70 notebooks constituting the whole Lenovo sponsorship of the Olympic Games, Windows Vista will not boot on a single system. And Vista may not yet have another chance to the official operating system at the Olympic Games as the next even will take place in 2012 by which time Microsoft would have already delivered Windows Seven, currently planned for 2009.