Microsoft Sends Up Trial Balloons for Windows 7

Windows Vista hasn't fared so well since its debut. Its generally low reputation among customers has led one Forrester analyst to dub Microsoft's latest OS "the New Coke of tech," while some studies have suggested that nearly a third of customers who buy a PC with Vista pre-installed may actually be downgrading those machines to XP.

Still other customers seem to wish the whole thing will just go away. They don't want to hear about Vista at all -- they'd rather hear about Windows 7, the upcoming OS from Microsoft that will be Vista's successor. And given the dismal consumer reaction to its latest attempts to market Vista, Microsoft seems willing to oblige. The sketchy early reports of Windows 7 have lately grown into a steady trickle of hints and rumors. The catch is, not all of it sounds particularly encouraging.

Perhaps because of the beatings it so often receives from the press, Microsoft seems to want you to get your Windows 7 news from the horse's mouth as much as possible. To that end, the Windows team has launched a new blog to chronicle the Windows 7 engineering efforts in detail. Senior Windows 7 product managers Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky promise to "post, comment, and participate" regularly.

Among the factoids revealed in the blog so far: The workforce tasked with assembling the forthcoming OS is immense, and it's dense with middle managers. As many as 2,000 developers may be involved, according to reports. That sounds like a truly Herculean project-management undertaking -- and indeed, if the figures quoted in the Windows 7 blog are to be believed, Microsoft has staffed up with one manager for every four developers. It's enough to make one wonder how Windows 7 will avoid the implementation failures and missed deadlines that plagued Vista's launch.

The engineering blog isn't the only evidence of Microsoft's recent lip-loosening, either. Elsewhere this week we learned even more interesting information. We've known for a while now that Windows 7 is expected to build on the Vista code base, rather than reinventing any substantial portion of the Windows kernel. As it turns out, however, the next version of Windows may be even closer to the current one than we expect.

According to Microsoft spokespeople, the server version of Windows 7 will be considered a minor update, rather than a high-profile new product. In fact, it's expected to ship under the name Windows Server 2008 R2 -- a designation that suggests it will offer few features that aren't already available in the current shipping version of Microsoft's server OS.

As tantalizing as these tidbits of information may be, however, hard facts about Windows 7 remain scarce. At this stage, any talk about the forthcoming product counts as little more than free marketing. As long as we all keep talking about Windows in some form or another, the less likely we are to jump ship to Mac OS X or (heaven forbid) Linux.

According to Microsoft, however, developers can expect to get their first in-depth look at the new OS at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) conference in October, and further information will be revealed at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) the following week. Until then, expect the rumor mill to remain in full force.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/blogs/mcallister_on_software/150037/microsoft_sends_up_trial_balloons_for_windows_7.html

It doesn't exactly sound awe inspiring to me. From what I can tell from reports and what some of the folk here have posted about it, it's some of the same old Vista same old with more bugs ironed out.

I think expectations of it being a big improvement on Vista are not going to met, with many similar program and driver incompatibilities relative to Windows XP.

Actually I wonder how many users are going to give Windows 7 a miss too? I mean if it's so similar to Vista then what's the point of changing to it and not Vista?

The only real difference I am aware of is, that when it is out, it is suppose to have touch screen capability, and that isn't a plus for me. I have to clean my LCD's enough without having fingerprints all over them. Can you say O.C.D. Just call me Monk LOL

yeshuas wrote:

Perhaps because of the beatings it so often receives from the press, Microsoft seems to want you to get your Windows 7 news from the horse's mouth as much as possible. To that end, the Windows team has launched a new blog to chronicle the Windows 7 engineering efforts in detail. Senior Windows 7 product managers Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky promise to "post, comment, and participate" regularly.

Engineering Windows 7

Welcome to our blog dedicated to the engineering of Microsoft Windows 7

Engineering Windows 7 blog

Grav!ty wrote:

It doesn't exactly sound awe inspiring to me. From what I can tell from reports and what some of the folk here have posted about it, it's some of the same old Vista same old with more bugs ironed out. I think expectations of it being a big improvement on Vista are not going to met, with many similar program and driver incompatibilities relative to Windows XP. Actually I wonder how many users are going to give Windows 7 a miss too? I mean if it's so similar to Vista then what's the point of changing to it and not Vista?

I'm generally of the same opinion, although I'm sure there will be some improvements under the hood -- but we've already seen with Vista that such improvements are not things that people genuinely care about.

It would take something big to get me interested in Windows 7, like some inclusion of WinFS or something...

I'm satisfied with Vista and with the incremental polishing and bug fixing that MS has proven to be competent at, I mean XP RTM and XP SP3 is almost night and day...

Grav!ty wrote:

It doesn't exactly sound awe inspiring to me. From what I can tell from reports and what some of the folk here have posted about it, it's some of the same old Vista same old with more bugs ironed out. I think expectations of it being a big improvement on Vista are not going to met, with many similar program and driver incompatibilities relative to Windows XP. Actually I wonder how many users are going to give Windows 7 a miss too? I mean if it's so similar to Vista then what's the point of changing to it and not Vista?

Hate dragging up a somewhat old post...

But you must remember that it is still in early alpha phase and is nowhere near completion. If you look back at the early (3xxx builds) it was a similar circumstance where it was basically just a few UI changes and some thought about adding more stuff.

*Speculate on this

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*Maybe they are getting ready for the PDC/WinHEC or a CTP build?