sigh: the consumer Vista ship date pool, and commentary

It's maddening, but not unexpected. Jim Allchin told analysts today (two random press mentions can be found here and here) that the consumer flavor of Vista won't RTM in time for the 2006 holiday season. If you listen hard, you can hear Santa cancelling the contract for a small army of muscular elves (elfs?) he had planned to have around to lug Christmas PCs.

Allchin is predicting January 2007. For poops and giggles, let's translate that as January 10, 2007. I'm going to call March 4, 2007. Any takers? Remember, I get the vig.

(Matisyahu fans will immediately recognize my date as the next Purimpalooza.)

Impact?

1. PC vendors are going to have a crappy holiday season - while they weren't banking on Vista, they sure were betting on it, and with so many bets on so many numbers, Jim just rolled a seven for them. Thanks Jim.
2. Apple is going to have a much better holiday season than they normally would have - families with a cool grand and a half or thereabouts who were going to buy a home computer around the holiday season will take a closer look at the goodies under Steve's tree. Odds are now that he'll ride his team hard and put them away wet to guarantee some new hotness for early Q4.
3. Independent software vendors (ISVs) in the B2C market are right now experiencing mixed emotions. Their development teams are smiling (more QA time to get ready for Vista), but their sales guys are cursing (no Vista-ready product for year-end). No such break for the B2B ISVs, they (we) are still full-steam-ahead for a Q4 Vista-for-business launch.
   

Until Jim announces that the business flavor is going to slip too. It could happen.