Microsoft announced that its annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference WinHEC will be held in fall 2008.

“We are pleased to announce that WinHEC 2008 will be held in the fall of 2008 on the West Coast (location to be determined). We have re-scheduled WinHEC for the fall in response to industry feedback,” the software company announced on the event’s web site.

Traditionally WinHEC, an event that started in 1992, was held in the spring. The conference is considered very important for device engineers and system builders as Microsoft presents news about its important released, hardware implementation directions and its vision for Windows and the future of PC computing.

Last year WinHEC was centered on Windows Vista, the new OS released in November 2007 for businesses and in January 2007 for consumers.

Microsoft is already working on the first update major update for Windows Vista, which was scheduled to be released in its final form in early 2008.

According to Microsoft, Windows Vista SP1 will not add new features, but instead it will address key feedback received from its customers. Also the company insisted that the SP1 will not affect any applications that are currently running on Windows Vista.

Earlier this week Microsoft began shipping the release candidate of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to some 15,000 invitation-only testers.

The postponement of WinHEC might be related to Vista SP1 and maybe Microsoft wants to give more time to software developers to evaluate the improvements brought by this update.