THE NEXT VERSION of the Vole's highly anticipated operating system is expected in November. It won't speed up introduction of this system but it at least means that we are one step closer to the Q4 2006 introduction.
New beta version of Longhorn aka Vista will have its graphic component a little bit readier than before as it's already time to start working on a user interface and the gaming part of the API. Both Nvidia and ATI are working on Vista drivers, and once this operating system is out, people will be able to see that last year's decision by ATI to start using frameworks was not a bad idea after all.
All Vista drivers will need frameworks, as this is something what Microsoft demanded, it was not a choice, it was an order.
Graphic companies have to start playing with Aero glass and all the other Mac OS looking visual effect features in Vista and therefore the Beta will get them even more functionality and bug fixes as well.
When it's done, Vista will have fully functional DirectX 10 inside but we suspect that some of the next betas might use DirectX 9.0L, the one that features Shader model 4.0 but we can not confirm or deny this yet.
After Beta 2 there is always Beta 3, possibly even a couple of Release candidates and it will sure take times to get the final retail product. Well, Windows XP with Service pack 2 is not bad at all at least when it comes to gaming and word processing.