Another Vista delay imminent?

We reported yesterday that industry analysts were confident that Vista would meet its current release targets--that would be November for the business and enterprise editions and January for the consumer edition. Well, those analysts would have been the boys and girls over at Goldman Sachs, who circulated a note to their clients on Wednesday, claiming that Microsoft was on track to release the final Beta of Vista this week, which would put them in a good position for a November release.

Not to be outdone, the folks at Gartner (who you might recall, have been skeptical about Vista's various launch windows from the start) insist that Microsoft will push back the oft-delayed OS yet again--to April or May of next year. While there's always work to be done on Windows, the analysts at Gartner aren't blaming buggy code (because, as we all know, that's never stopped them from shipping a product before) but rather, currently pending lawsuits. While the giant ape of the software world will likely swat away lawsuits from Symantec and Adobe like so many biplanes, the European Commission will likely prove harder to quash. Quite frankly, if a late Vista means a Vista that's more ready for the enterprise--and less aching for a service pack--I'm all for it.

For more on advent of Vista:
- check out this article from ZDnet