You are no doubt waiting with baited breath for Microsoft's Windows Vista to come out, but... it looks like you may have to wait just a bit longer.

Microsoft is releasing a second Release Candidate tomorrow of Vista, which may just put the October 25 release to manufacturing date out of joint.

To satisfy Microsoft's internal quality control metrics, the number of outstanding bugs must drop below 500 before Vista hits the shop shelves. RC1 which in normal parlance should've been almost ready to roll, had 1,400 or so bugs left in it. The question now is if Microsoft has managed to drop that number by a good 1,000 in RC2 and also, if the reported device driver support issues have been solved.

If RC2 isn't sufficiently bug-free, the release date is likely to be pushed further into 2007, much to Microsoft's hardware partners' chagrin.

I'll try to get the ISOs for Vista over the weekend and install it... wish me luck. :)