It’s emerging that the next Community Technology Preview (CTP), planned this month, is slated to include all of Windows Vista’s features.

DVD movies have popularized wide-screen formats for a while now. Windows chief Jim Allchin has said there are a lot of uses for the extra pixels. The Co-President of Microsoft’s Platform, Products and Services Division, has stressed the presence of the Sidebar in the next release: “That’s why Sidebar is something important. You will be able to put it to the side and just watch it on the periphery, and the wide screen allows this.”

News.com comments: “Sidebar is one of a number of features that Microsoft has talked about as part of Vista, but has yet to include in external test versions.”

“This CTP that we are doing in this quarter will have all the features that we had planned to put in the product,” Allchin said.

Other features expected to debut in the February test version include a new migration tool aimed at making it easier for people moving their systems to Vista from Windows XP. Microsoft is targeting the February test release at businesses, aiming to get early adopter companies to try out the software on a few hundred PCs each. A consumer-oriented test release, planned for the second quarter of this year, will be made available to “hundreds of thousands, maybe millions” of customers, Allchin said. The final version of Vista is slated to arrive in time to be on PCs sold in the 2006 holiday season.

We’ve heard this before, though, not least about Beta 2, previously due in December and now to be fragmented.

You have to wonder about that July/August date for a full OEM release. If that doesn’t happen next Christmas will be missed and a whole industry will suffer. Let’s wish Jim Allchin, a realist if nothing else, the very best of luck on this one.