Some more info on Windows 7 comming soon (next year?).



Gates: Next Windows ‘sometime’ in next year
Comments suggest Vista successor might be released sooner than expected


By Michael Christie
updated 12:26 p.m. PT, Fri., April. 4, 2008

MIAMI - Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates said on Friday he expected the new version of Windows operating software, code-named Windows 7, to be released "sometime in the next year or so."

The software giant has been aiming to issue more regular updates of the operating system software that powers the majority of the world's personal computers. Nevertheless, Gates' comments suggested that a successor to the Vista program might be released sooner than was generally expected.

Microsoft has said it expected to release a new version of Windows approximately three years after the introduction of Vista in January 2007. A company spokeswoman said Gates' comments are in line with a development cycle that usually releases a test version of the software before its official introduction.

"I'm superenthused about what it will do in lots of ways," Gates said in a seminar on corporate philanthropy held during an annual meeting in Miami of the Inter-American Development Bank.

"That'll be sometime in the next year or so that we'll have a new version," Gates said in response to a question from the audience.

MSNBC

Windows 7 Confirmed For 2010

I wonder when they're going to get a Beta program on the road?

Interesting to read this point....

Quote:

Client versions of Windows 7 will ship in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavours.

At the Server 2k8 launch event, MS confirmed that Server 2008 will be the last Server OS that's available in the 32-bit x86 format. All server releases from this point will be 64-bit only. Wonder when (and if) they'll take the same route with the client OS?

Communicating Windows 7
Posted by Chris Flores on Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Typically when Microsoft ships a new OS (like Windows Vista), we immediately start talking about the next version-which begs two questions: 1) is Microsoft working on a new version of Windows, and if so, 2) why aren't you talking about it?
I thought I would spend a minute giving you an update on where we are. First, yes, we are working on a new version of Windows. As you likely know, it's called Windows 7.We are always looking for new ways to deliver great experiences for our customers. This is especially true of Windows - where we're constantly examining trends in hardware, software and services to ensure that we continue to drive the innovation that has both made Windows the world's most popular operating system and has provided a foundation on which our partners built great products and businesses. When we shipped Windows 2000, we were already working on Windows XP and we started working on Windows Vista even before we released Windows XP. So naturally, we've been thinking about the investments we made in Windows Vista and how we can build on these for the next version of Windows.

What is a little different today is when and how we are talking about the next version of Windows. So, why the change in approach? We know that when we talk about our plans for the next release of Windows, people take action. As a result, we can significantly impact our partners and our customers if we broadly share information that later changes. With Windows 7, we're trying to more carefully plan how we share information with our customers and partners. This means sharing the right level of information at the right time depending on the needs of the audience. For instance, several months ago we began privately sharing our preliminary plans for Windows 7 with software and hardware partners who build on the Windows platform. This gave them an opportunity to give us feedback and gave us the opportunity to incorporate their input into our plans. As the product becomes more complete, we will have the opportunity to share our plans more broadly. Steven Sinofsky, Windows and Windows Live Engineering SVP, talks more about this in his interview with CNET's Ina Fried, published today: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9951638-56.html.

We know that this is a change in our approach, but we are confident that it will help us not only to build even better products, but also to be more predictable in the delivery of our products. We also know that this change has led to some confusion, so we would like to share information today that will hopefully clear up some of this.

Windows Vista Team Blog


About Chris Flores
I am currently a Director at Microsoft working on the Windows Client Communications Team.

Quote:

the long-term architectural investments we introduced in Windows Vista and then refined for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 will carry forward in Windows 7. Windows Vista established a very solid foundation, particularly on subsystems such as graphics, audio, and storage. Windows Server 2008 was built on that foundation and Windows 7 will be as well. Contrary to some speculation, Microsoft is not creating a new kernel for Windows 7. Rather, we are refining the kernel architecture and componentization model introduced in Windows Vista. While these changes will increase our engineering agility, they will not impact the user experience or reduce application or hardware compatibility. In fact, one of our design goals for Windows 7 is that it will run on the recommended hardware we specified for Windows Vista and that the applications and devices that work with Windows Vista will be compatible with Windows 7. We are well into the development process of Windows 7, and we're happy to report that we're still on track to ship approximately three years after the general availability of Windows Vista. As always, we will be releasing early builds of Windows 7 prior to its general availability as a means to gain feedback, but we're not yet ready to discuss timing and specific plans for any Beta releases

Thanks JD, looks like it could be a while before we see a Beta. It's very difficult at the moment to imagine what significant changes to expect. Sounds to me like Windows = Windows = Windows. At least there's no bull about how it's going to change our lives for ever this time round.

You are welcome Graham, that one was easy


Here is a bit of a lomg interview w/ Bill & Steve...

Live from D: Gates and Ballmer debut Windows 7
by Ryan Block, posted May 27th 2008 at 9:15PM







engadget

Windows 7: Now A Late 2009 Deliverable


Quite honestly I think the touch screen thing is gimmicky and a non-starter. Not sure I want my monitor full of fingerprints anyway.

If I had a tablet PC, I would want the multi-touch capability just because that would be a pretty interesting feature to have, but for most users, it's going to go unused most likely.

I clicked on the links at the beginning of this thread in some of these posts and now they go to the wrong place, what is up, were they spoofs and one of them claim???????

EDIT: they look like some dead link Daniel.

I get this now:

Quote:

Whoaa there... You can't get there from here You can't get there from here!! In other words, the page or file you were trying to reach doesn't actually exist.

===========================

From the upcoming PDC2008 in October:

PDC2008 Sessions Overview

Windows 7: Graphics Advances
Windows 7 enables you to advance the graphics capabilities of your applications while carrying forward existing investments in your Win32 codebase, including GDI and GDI+. New enhancements to DirectX let Win32 applications harness the latest innovations in GPUs and LCD displays, including support for scalable, high-performance, 2D and 3D graphics, text, and images. Also learn how to leverage the GPU's parallelism for general-purpose computation such as image processing.

Windows 7: Optimizing for Energy Efficiency and Battery Life
A single application can reduce mobile battery life by up to 30%. Windows 7 provides advances for building energy-efficient applications. In this session we will discuss how to leverage new Windows infrastructure to reduce application power consumption and efficiently schedule background tasks and services.

Windows 7: Touch Computing
In Windows 7, innovative touch and gesture support will enable more direct and natural interaction in your applications. This session will highlight the new multi-touch gesture APIs and explain how you can leverage them in your applications.

Windows 7: Web Services in Native Code
Windows 7 introduces a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code. This session will discuss the programming model, interoperability aspects with other implementations of WS-* protocols and demonstrate various services and applications built using this API.

PDC2008