Easy says EC, Microsoft hits revise key Microsoft and European Commission reach a compromise on Vista. BY OUR TECH CORRESPONDENT 17 October 2006: The seven-year irritant has finally subsided. The European Commission and Microsoft have reached a compromise to put an end to their seven-year legal war of attrition. With this, the European launch of Microsoft’s new computer operating system Vista is expected to happen in November. According to reports, competition commissioner Neelie Kroes who had slapped a penalty of Euro 280.5 million on Microsoft last July for failing to comply with commission anti-trust rulings, has said that Microsoft agreed to take into account EC’s rules and regulations. Kroes managed to reach an understanding with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, on Thursday that the group would make significant changes to Vista to ensure rival software is available on its operating system. It may be recalled here that Microsoft had been fined a record euro 497 million two years ago after accusations that it was abusing its market dominance EC and Microsoft are reported to have agreed that the European Commission has not given the nod for the commercial launch of Vista to business users next month and to retail customers in January. The software behemoth in fact agreed to make three key changes in the form of commitments. With the changes to come, users can choose their own search engine, a new set of codes that will enable rivals to gain access to Vista's core would be created and finally its new fixed layout document format, XML, similar to that of Adobe's PDF files, will be opened up for scrutiny by a standards body. BY OUR TECH CORRESPONDENT