Microsoft has officially unveiled its Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite to consumers at a company event in New York. 

The software will be available in 17 languages in retail locations across 70 countries from 30 January.

Several retail stores plan on opening earlier than usual on Tuesday morning to offer the software to shoppers, and a few shops in the US will open their doors for a midnight sale on Monday.

But the release is not expected to garner the same level of attention as the launch of Nintendo's Wii or Sony's PlayStation 3 late last year.

Vista and Office 2007 kick off a "new era of personal computing", said Microsoft, claiming that the new user interface makes the software easier to use for digital media and entertainment such as photos and videos.

"These are the most amazing versions of Windows and Office ever," boasted Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Windows Vista is expected to do a much better job of protecting its users from online threats than earlier versions. User accounts will run in a low privilege mode by default that limits the amount of damage an attacker can do.

Users also receive clear warnings whenever an application attempts to access potentially harmful services.

Windows Vista was made available to large enterprises in November.

Dell started taking orders on Saturday for new desktop and notebook computers running Vista, stating that the sales volume of several thousand systems exceeded expectations.

Consumers who purchased new computers with Windows XP since November are entitled to a free or discounted software upgrade.

The launch of Windows Vista has been delayed several times, and has taken Microsoft's engineers more than five years to develop.