Microsoft set to publicize list of 800 Vista-compatible apps
In spite of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's recent comments designed to dampen Wall Street's expectations for Windows Vista, the Windows team itself is continuing to do all it can to encourage customer uptake of the newest version of Windows.
On February 20, Microsoft announced final availabilty of six Vista deployment tools. The company also went public with its plans to publish a list of applications that have been certified by independent testers as "Vista-compatible." This is not the list of applications that the company is tracking internally via data gathered as part of its Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) testing, however; instead, it is simply a list of companies who apply for and are granted third-party Vista certification.
Microsoft has made test versions of a number of Vista deployment tools available to Microsoft customers for a number of months. On Tuesday, Microsoft made available for download six of them. Now available in final form:
* Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment
* Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0
* Windows Vista Hardware Assesment 1.0
* Volume Activation Management Tool
* Key Management Service for Windows Server 2003 (Read more on KMS for Server 2003 here.)
* Virtual PC 2007 (Read more about VPC 2007 here.)
What isn't available yet is the list of 800 Vista-certified applications that Microsoft is going to make public. This is not the same kind of list that the company provided to customers when it introduced WIndows XP Service Pack (SP) 2. That list was a constantly updated itemization of applications that worked well, worked to some degree and didn't work at all that Microsoft pulled together and made public in Knowledge Base article form.
Instead, with Vista, Microsoft plans on providing a list of applications from software vendors who paid third-party testing companies to verify independently Vista compatibility. Microsoft officials said so far there are 108 "Vista certified" applications and another 683 that "work with" Vista.
Microsoft officials said they will release the Vista certified app list some time on February 20.