Trolls: Slain, Lake: crossed, Mountain: climbed, Vista: Released.
A couple of hours ago Jim Alchin, sent a mail which begins Today we are announcing the Release to Manufacturing of Windows Vista.
The first high point that Jim calls out is "This is the first time we’ve supported a broad array of product skus to help address different customer segments – and they’re all supported using a single product image. The same DVD can be used to install any of the product images." which ties in with something I posted earlier.
There are a bunch of other things in Jim's mail, including confirmation of a US launch event which the BBC had already announced. Watch this space for news of UK launch activities.
To explain the title of this post, it is not a tribute to the NatWest bank adverts which run in Britain, but to a famous mail from Brian Valentine. Back in 2005 someone asked where the mountain wallpapers came from in Vista and Brian - who was in charge of it at the time - sent this vintage reply.
Every day when I log on – I look at this nice peaceful quiet serene picture and I like to think of it as a mountain… a frickin’ mountain… a frickin’ mountain we have to scale to ship Vista…. a frickin’ mountain we have to scale to ship Vista that has a pretty little frickin’ lake in front of it… a frickin’ mountain we have to scale to ship Vista that has a pretty little frickin lake that we have to walk on water to cross in front of it so we can scale the frickin’ mountain to ship Vista… the only thing missing is a bunch of large frickin’ ogres and trolls blocking the way that we have to slay before we walk on the frickin’ water in the pretty little frickin’ lake that leads to the frickin’ mountain we have to scale to frickin’ ship Vista…
Next stop, Longhorn server, then on to Windows "Vienna".