For enterprise IT managers, it will be much easier and faster to create "images" of Vista that can be installed quickly on corporate computers, said Allchin. Another upgrade aimed at IT staffers is the automatic background fixing of Vista registry errors.

Microsoft will not have individual Media Center and Tablet versions of Vista, as it does with XP. It will continue to release separate flavors of the Vista OS, Allchin said, but he declined to offer details on what kinds of versions would be available.