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Microsoft has also announced that the first publicly available Beta 1 of Vista will become available by 3 August 2005. This initial release will be aimed primarily at developers and other IT professionals. This should enable the software development community to get a head start on the operating system and enable them to get new applications and drivers completed ready for the launch period next year.

The company has already said that another cut of Beta 1 for developers is likely to appear in September.

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A more widely available Beta 2 for end users is not likely to appear until the beginning of 2006.

among the claims made for Vista is that it will load applications 15 per cent faster and boot 50 per cent faster than the existing Windows XP.

The announcement of the Vista name means that Microsoft is now pretty sure about the final release date sometime towards the back end of 2006. The five-year gap between the release of XP and Vista is the longest there has been between major releases of Microsoft operating systems and represents the complexity of writing a modern OS.

Even so, the announcement comes almost a year since Microsoft was forced to abandon the new WinFS file system from Longhorn for the launch, in order to deliver the Vista 'in a reasonable time frame'. Microsoft now says that the new file system will only be in beta at launch.

Announcements concerning the new operating system will be posted on the new Vista web pages on the Microsoft site.