Microsoft will be shifting its products to 64-bit only beginning later this year, Bill Gates told more than 3,500 attendees at the company’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle on Tuesday.
The Microsoft chairman and chief software architect also used his keynote at WinHEC to announce the availability of beta 2 releases of three major products: Microsoft’s latest and long-awaited operating system (OS) Windows Vista, its next office suite, Microsoft Office 2007, and Windows Server, codenamed Longhorn.
While the beta 2 of Windows Vista is available, the consumer version of the new OS could be pushed back past the stated January launch date, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at a news conference in Tokyo.
The operating system was due to be launched this year but in March the company said it wouldn’t get broad release until January 2007. Ballmer said the planned January launch may slip further based on feedback from a beta release program and the product road-maps of hardware vendors.
