>> Do you know if there is any information available on the release of the
>> promised LP's for non-Ultimate versions of Vista yet?
> Microsoft has not promised to support other Vista SKUs, only Ultimate and
> Enterprise editions.
Minor correction - Charlie is asking about LIPs, not MUIs. These are
different things. See
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/r...e/muizone.mspx
For MUIs, yes - these will only be available on Enterprise and Ultimate.
LIPs on the other hand, have no particular restriction on Edition. They
might impose arbitrary requirements for particular LIPs, eg, it might query
the "Kernel-MUI-Number-Allowed" property; but there's no basic requirement
to run a LIP on a particular edition of Vista.
However, LIPs are created by a much less structured process than MUIs. An
MUI is basically a formal, in-house development project at Microsoft, with
dedicated full-time coders, testers, program managers, guys with whips
beating the troops etc. An LIP is created by a much more lasseiz-faire
process, conulting with community groups, academics, folks working on them
in their spare time, relying on intermitent grants from National
governments, very few dedicated full-time Microsoft staff, etc. Plus the
development of LIPs is much more driven by demand than for MUIs ... if there
aren't many Slovakian speakers (for example) using Vista, then no-one's
going to burn out trying to complete a Slovakian LIP.
As far as I know, there are NO Vista LIPs released yet. They might start
appearing in dribs and drabs over the next 2 or 3 years. Some of the XP LIPs
have only just been completed! So Vista LIPs will be a long way off.
--
Andrew McLaren
amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au