14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft made Windows Vista available for businesses in November 2006. Additionally, the company released its latest, and touted as most secure Windows platform to consumers in January 2007. Still, Windows Vista is not considered ripe enough to be at the core of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. This perspective comes after Vista has pushed in excess of 60 million licenses worldwide in its first six months on the market. However, despite the availability of Vista, Windows XP will be at the backbone of the infrastructure of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The organizers opted for the XP platform released in 2001 over Vista because of concerns over the stability and maturity of the new platform.
"At the Olympics, we need the most reliable and stable system," stated Leon Xie, director of Olympic Technology and Sponsorship at Lenovo as cited by Yahoo News. And while Windows XP will play a vital role in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Vista has been pushed aside, to the periphery of the sporting celebration. The world's third largest computer manufacturer, Lenovo, is the official sponsor for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Lenovo has already supplied the event with 700 servers, some 800 laptops and 12,000 desktop computers and 2,000 printers. The Chinese-based PC maker additionally delivered more than 5,000 machines to take care of mundane tasks adjacent to the games, such as ornaments in the athlete's lounges, or to server marketing roles.
Responsible for not choosing Windows Vista as the core operating system for the 2008 Olympic Games is the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. Still, there is another side to this story. By August 8, the official opening of the 2008 Olympic Games, there is no doubt that Vista will be a fully grown platform. In this regard, Microsoft is already test-driving pre-beta releases for the operating system's first service pack. However, preparations for the 2008 Olympiad have debuted long before Windows Vista had been available. The continuous delays from Microsoft of its latest operating system are practically responsible for the sidekick role that Vista will play to XP at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.