The consumer edition of Windows Vista won’t be available in stores and outlets until at least January; but in the meantime, the big holiday push is proceeding on schedule, especially for the benefit of hardware manufacturers whose prospects for a cheerful Christmas depend on at least the promise of Vista.

One week from Monday, Microsoft and Intel will jointly kick off a 23 city tour of North America, starting in Miami and ending on December 14 in Seattle. The so-called “Ready 2 Rock Road Show” is ostensibly geared toward channel partners – those in the business of selling their equipment.

There’s a bit of a consumer-oriented message as well, at least one which the two companies would like to see passed on verbatim to their end customers.

The essence of the message is this: Both companies have crossed (or, more accurately, engineered and then crossed) a major technological gap with their respective products. Customers may need to be convinced they’re approaching that same gap. In order to make the most of the crossover to multicore, for example, the customer will need Vista. And in order for the customer to optimize his experience with the new Vista environment, he’ll want the new breed of 65 nm Core 2 Duo processors.

With volume licensees (read: businesses) being the first to get their hands on Vista in November, Intel has chosen to use this stage show not to push Viiv consumer PCs but vPro business architecture instead, complete with Active Management Technology, gigabit Ethernet, and virtualization.

How, exactly, Intel plans to make its business case on a public stage with a rock-and-roll theme, may just be worth the price of admission to find out. There is a price, by the way - $19.95 for tickets purchased in advance, or up to $59.95 for a limited “backstage pass,” which will presumably enable attendees to get a first-hand look at the new systems and their presenters.

Interestingly, one of the half-hour talks during the 12-hour session, for each of the 23 cities, is entitled, “Tune Up Your Hardware Sales Today While Planning for the Future.” The description of this session says everything you may want to know about the strategy Microsoft and Intel have chosen in the face of Vista’s delays.

“Show customers that they can have the best of both worlds,” says the Ready 2 Rock Web site, “The dual-core computing power of today, and the advanced features of Windows Vista tomorrow. Instead of waiting for the next Microsoft operating system, keep selling Windows Vista-ready systems now, and upgrade customers when it comes available.”

Meanwhile, during a Vista-oriented event at the DigitalLife 2006 show in New York, Microsoft unveiled its much-revised Vista logo program, along with several of the companies that have opted to participate. With the language having been tweaked several times during the past year, the two-tier scheme now includes the “Works with Windows Vista” logo for devices that promise mere compatibility, and the “Certified for Windows Vista” logo for items that promise to deliver the optimum experience.

The “Certified” logo is most important for vendors such as Nvidia, since that optimum experience most directly translates into something the consumer can see. In its own consumer product push, Nvidia announced today it’s giving marketing support to graphics card manufacturers BFG, XFX, and EVGA, all of whom produce cards with Nvidia’s GPUs. For them, the “Works with Vista” logo doesn’t really matter much.

In a statement published by Nvidia this morning, EVGA president Andrew Han noted, “Windows Vista is the first operating system that requires a GPU to get the best end user experience.” So the hope for graphics card producers is the same as for Intel and Microsoft: that consumers’ interest in one new technology will compel them to see the need for the other, and perhaps make the investment anyway even if they can't reap the benefits until sometime next year.