Microsoft says you'll also wait for Office suite

SEATTLE - Three days after saying it will delay the consumer version of its new Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft Corp. said Friday that the update to its Office business software suite also won't appear in stores until January.

The new version of Office, the popular suite that includes a word processor, Excel spreadsheet and Outlook e-mail, had been expected to be widely released by year's end.

In a prepared statement, the Redmond, Wash., software company said Office 2007 will be completed in October as planned and will be available at that time to large customers that buy software licenses in bulk. But it will not hit retail shelves until January, to coincide with Windows Vista's retail debut.

Malina Johnson, a spokeswoman with Microsoft's public relations firm Waggener Edstrom, said in an e-mail that the decision to delay the release of the retail version is "simply an indication of our desire to provide an easy retail experience by coordinating delivery with Windows Vista." She said development of the product is on track.

Microsoft will release some versions of Windows Vista to businesses in November. But the company said Tuesday it would release the consumer version in January, after computer makers and others complained that setbacks in the new operating system were making it tough to prepare for a holiday sales push.

The delay, which the company said resulted in part from efforts to improve security, is the latest in a series of hiccups for Windows Vista. But the lag could undermine Microsoft's standing.

In the half-decade it has taken the company to develop the new version of Windows, Google has blossomed from a little-watched Internet search engine to one of Microsoft's biggest threats.

Words such as "blog" and "spyware" have entered the popular lexicon, in their own ways transforming the online experience. Apple's iPod and RIM's BlackBerry have revolutionized on-the-go gadgetry, becoming just two of the myriad competitors challenging the world's largest software company.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has undergone major changes of its own, including a massive retrenchment to focus on security and moves to get further into businesses as varied as video game consoles and online mapping.

Yet the company has struggled to push out the next release of its flagship product.

"The product is clearly now really late," said Rob Enderle, who is among the industry analysts who once expected the new Windows version as early as 2003.

The release of Vista was thrown off track in early 2002, when Chairman Bill Gates ordered the entire company to focus on improving the security of its existing and future products, following a series of embarrassing breaches.

The time-consuming effort included a major security update, Service Pack 2. But the work also took engineers away from developing Vista.

"We made the decision that it was more important for our customers to improve the security of our existing products than it was to accelerate the introduction" of Windows Vista, said Brad Goldberg, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Client product management.

Goldberg counts the Service Pack 2 release â as well as versions of Windows for Tablet PCs and computers that are meant to be media hubs â as evidence that the company has been quite busy despite what may appear to be a long stretch between Windows XP and Vista.

"We actually feel like we've released a lot in the last five years," he said.

Efforts to further improve security in Vista continue to be a factor in more recent delays, which analysts say are likely because the company wants to make further, aggressive improvements.

For example, the new version of Windows will include more sophisticated ways to prevent people from downloading dangerous software.

Al Gillen, a research director with IDC, said the improvement is important but also quite difficult because Microsoft must make sure that users can still easily use legitimate programs.

It's one of many ways that Windows' vast popularity can be both a blessing and a curse. When a new version is released, the company must ensure its compatibility with existing printers, photo-editing software and hundreds of thousands of other non-Microsoft products.

"They really do have a lot of baggage they drag on," Gillen said.

Security and compatibility aren't all to blame. Microsoft also is trying to make long-overdue improvements to the architecture of the operating system. Over many releases, analysts say, the system became unwieldy, making simple jobs complex because various pieces of the system were so interconnected.