REDMOND, WA – According to statements published on the Windows Team Vista blog, Microsoft has completed the first “release candidate,” or test version, of its new Windows Vista operating system and it will be made available to beta testers next week.In a letter posted to the Team Vista blog, Windows Division co-president Jim Allchin writes “To the TechBeta community: It’s official — Windows Vista RC1 is done!”

Allchin continues that next week, “a broader set of technical customers will get them via MSDN and TechNet,” but that Microsoft wanted to get RC1 into the hands of its TechBeta community testers immediately, in order to start receiving feedback right away.

While Allchin said Vista is “in great shape with RC1,” he added “there’s still a lot of testing to do.”

Allchin states that Microsoft has made many improvements since the Beta2 version of Vista, including user interface “adjustments,” additional device drivers, and other measures to provide “enhanced performance.”

Sven Hallauer, director of release management for Windows Vista, told Computerworld that when it comes to the release date, “Time is of the essence.”

“We have a feedback window of two to three weeks after RC1 release where we can really make changes to the product in terms of getting deeper into the product’s code base,” Hallauer said. “Thereafter, we become very, very constrained in terms of what we can change without resetting the clock and slipping the release.”

Amazon.com has already begun accepting orders for Vista, with a list price for Vista Ultimate of $399 for the full version.

Speaking in July, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell warned that added delay in the release of Vista could cost the company millions in sales revenue. Liddell said that should Microsoft’s release date slip from January 2007 to the second quarter of 2007, the losses could total between $200 million and $400 million.

Joe Wilcox, an analyst with JupiterResearch, said that whether Vista makes deadline is now largely dependent on the testers evaluating the new OS.

“Microsoft is committed to making its deadlines, but the decision is now out of Microsoft’s hands,” Wilcox said in an interview with Bloomberg.com. “It’s up to the testers and what they find.”

The Microsoft Windows Team Vista Blog can be viewed here: http://blogs.technet.com/windowsvista/default.aspx