I recently found some really useful information about multilingual user interface (MUI) features in Windows Vista, and so I wanted to provide a link here for anyone who does multilingual development or manages multilingual systems deployment.

You can find the Guide to Windows Vista Multilingual User Interface at http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/85e289ca-9fd8-4963-b06a-5ecc457006c71033.mspx?mfr=true

This guide includes discussion of the following topics:

• What is Multilingual User Interface (MUI) - describes Windows Vista MUI implementation
• Benefits of MUI - why you would want to configure an MUI system, and some limitations of the Windows Vista MUI model
• Planning for MUI - determining the requirements of your users and the capabilities of your hardware; deploying a global OS image or regional images
• Using MUI - configuration options in the Windows Vista OS UI; installing additional MUI language packs in silent mode
• Prerequisites for using MUI - technical and licensing requirements for deploying MUI language packs for Windows Vista

A key point listed in the prerequisites section of this document is a licensing requirement that states that a Windows Vista OS can only include a single language, with the exception of the Ultimate and Enterprise editions.

Some additional links that are useful when preparing to deploy Windows Vista OS images include the following:

• Windows Vista Deployment step-by-step guide - http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/88f80cb7-d44f-47f7-a10d-e23dd53bc3fa1033.mspx?mfr=true
• Windows Automated Install Kit (WAIK) documentation - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=993c567d-f12c-4676-917f-05d9de73ada4&displaylang=en