We’re up to our necks in conspiracy theories about the Windows Vista delay (the project will not now be released to consumers until … well … January 2007 [which in itself might be a moveable feast] ). The multiple brackets here tell their own story.

Odd that the cockup theory seems to have gone out of the window. Conspiracies are so much more copy-friendly, aren’t they?

Well, Syntagma prefers to probe the truth and put both sides of the argument until that narrow strand of veracity becomes visible like the precarious mountain track that it is.

First up, read Phil Sim, an Aussie standing up (just a little) for the originator of the 60 percent rewrite proposition, David Richards — owner of Smarthouse where the story first appeared.

Next up, Robert Cringely gives us a delicious mangling piece about Redmond office politics and psychology. Blimey, if half of it’s true you wouldn’t want to mess with these guys. No wonder they’ve got Mr Nice Chap, Robert Scoble, fronting the public face.

Now for our theory: come on Cringe, old fella, they can’t be that screwed up. No-one can. Can they?

Syntagma thinks they really do have problems here. With Allchin moved from pillar to post, and BillG already in Elder Statesman mode, there’s no single coherent mind driving the central core of the project. They simply can’t make up their collective minds about a number of core issues.

I’m sure Cringely’s wicked thrusts have some credence at lower levels. In other words, they’ve crossed people’s minds. But I don’t believe anything so blatant is taking place.

So, a bit of cockup (as oh so usual) and a couple of dashes of conspiracy, plus a large dose of the Fog of Projectitis, brings us to the inevitable conclusion.

But, hey, January 2007 is only the CES presentation and the release to OEMs (manufacturers). It’ll take some months for the actual preinstalled boxes to hit the high street. That means April/May 2007.

So where’s that System Pack 3 for Windows XP? And let’s have IE7 for XP in double-quick time, please.

Oh, and Cringely’s promising us some real dirt on Microsoft soon.

Update: Tech.Memeorandum has a lively blogospherical discussion on this story.