Amid the row over whether Microsoft will be fined $2.4m a day for failing to comply with an EU Commision ruling, we now hear that computer makers have complained to the Commision.

Jonathan Todd, the Commission’s spokesman said: “Several companies have expressed their concerns to the Commission concerning Microsoft’s Vista operating system.” It seems there are no formal complaints but that the Commission was “monitoring the situation.”

This follows a court filing in the United States, in which the Justice Department said it had received a complaint concerning Windows Vista.

“As with any Commission antitrust decision that established clear principles, the Commission expects Microsoft to respect the principles established by the March, 2004, decision when designing and implementing Vista,” Todd said.

Reuters reports: “The Commission found in March, 2004, that Microsoft had broken European antitrust laws, fined it 497 million euros ($595 million) and ordered it to change its business practices”.

The Justice Department, anticipating Todd, said it was continuing to “monitor the situation”.

Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said at the time the company had discussed the design of Windows Vista with all of the top 20 PC manufacturers and nearly all of them were satisfied with its approach.

Microsoft announced a major development project yesterday to spend $1 billion enlarging its Redmond headquarters over the next three years. The work will expand the site by one-third, adding fourteen buildings and 3.1 million sq ft of space.

The ambitious plan highlights optimistic employment prospects at the campus, with room being made for 12,000 extra people onsite. The move has set off a scramble by city officials to improve transport infrastructure on the area.

Seattle PI comments: “Microsoft’s growth, to be accomplished by constructing buildings and buying existing ones, significantly accelerates the campus redevelopment plan approved by the city of Redmond last year.”

Curiously, all this will be accomplished in less time than it has taken to develop Windows Vista. Maybe the builders should be taken on to advise the software geeks.

Now here’s a wheeze. Microsoft has put up a game on its website allowing you to guess the launch date of Windows Vista.

Take a guess and you get shown a video which gives some clues of the true date.

But do they know the date themselves? Hasn’t the release of Windows Vista been a moveable feast for ever?

Someone, though, has worked it all out and claims it’s December 1.

By simple iteration I quickly found that “early” ends Nov 30th while “late” starts Dec 1st. So either one of these will be the launch date. If this all is not a dirty little trick from the webmaster, of course…

Can this be true?

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Well, there’s a hostage to fortune. And it’s made not by us, but by David Coursey of PCMag.com. Readers will know we’ve had our doubts about this, especially after the sporadic releases of Beta 2, now being served in bits and pieces.

David claims: “After my recent Jim Allchin column ran, I got an interesting call from an ex-Microsoft person: ‘What makes you think Vista will actually ship this year?’ my friend demanded, then adding a list of hurdles the operating system faces before it can RTM—release to manufacturing–and, after that, spring upon the world at-large. ‘Because Jim Allchin told me it would,’ I responded.”

If anyone can say that wth certainty it’s Allchin. He it was who marched into Bill Gates’s office back in 2004 and told him bluntly Vista wasn’t working. It needed to be rewritten from the ground up. Gates eventually agreed. So Allchin is someone who doesn’t BS on Windows Vista.

David Coursey seems to agree too:

Now, I know that sounds naïve at first blush, especially considering Vista’s history of missed targets and its reduced feature set. The latter, by the way, is perhaps the most important decision Windows czar Allchin made to get the operating system to ship at all.

While the Vista betas currently in circulation are clearly not ready to ship, they really aren’t that bad, either.

Further, what Microsoft really must ship this year is a Vista that will run on all the Media Centers and other PCs that will be sold next Christmas.

“Allchin is very proud of a chart he has that shows his release date predictions have, for the past year, all come true. That’s a good sign. So is the pending release of a feature complete beta, meaning all hands at Microsoft can be shifted to testing, fixing and tweaking.”

It seems Jim Allchin has announced his retirement at the end of this year … after Vista ships.