Microsoft Co. said Monday that it will start sales of the Japanese version of its latest edition of the Windows operating system on Sept. 23, with the upgrade to be released the day before.

Included in the Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me, will be a feature allowing users to recover deleted programs and to edit digital images that appear on their monitors, according to a spokesperson at the Japan arm of Microsoft Corp.

As 90 percent of personal computers in Japan are equipped with Windows, the company is confident Japanese users will upgrade, the spokesperson said.

However, some PC makers in Japan held off releasing new models preinstalled with Windows Me to wait and see how Japanese PC users -- who some expect to react rather coolly to the new release -- will respond, industry officials said.

The upgrade version will likely sell for 6,400 yen during the initial sales period through Dec. 31, although a nonupgrade version will cost much more, the officials said.

Only PCs equipped with a Pentium microprocessor with a speed of at least 150 megahertz will be able to run Windows Me. Installing the upgrade on a PC equipped with Windows 98 requires at least 295 megabytes of free hard-disk space.

In February, Microsoft released its Windows 2000 OS, which chiefly targets professionals and corporate users.

Microsoft is trying to make more of a difference between Windows Me and Windows 2000 by including a variety of entertainment programs in the new release, the officials said.