Jim Allchin Quality Quotations

We're on track to complete Windows Vista this year, but quality is the top-line message.

Where we sit today, things are going according to plan, and we're feeling very good. But I always like to preface that as I did with Windows 2000, Windows XP: quality is the thing that will dictate if we're ready to go. So if we have any problems in quality, I'll slip this product. It's the thing that is at the top of my mind.

We could have just gone ahead, but I didn't think it was the right thing to do. We're setting stringent quality bars on what we do.

Quality was the No. 1 thing that we focused on here, and we feel good enough to lock that date in. It would have been nice to make the back-to-school time frame for pre-loading, but quality came first.

Perhaps after we get closer to shipment we can discuss the dashboard and quality metrics we have. Right now, the team needs to completely focus.

Product quality was the first priority on the first day of Vista (development) and we won't compromise on that. We needed just a few more weeks and that put us in what we would call a bubble where some partners would be impacted more than others and we decided to optimize it for the entire industry.

Product quality and a great out-of-box experience have been two of our key drivers for Windows Vista, and we are on track to deliver on both. But the industry requires greater lead time to deliver Windows Vista on new PCs during holiday. We must optimize for the industry, so we've decided to separate business and consumer availability.