I’m not sure how you feel but I don’t think that Windows Vista has been a huge success (yet) and did not make an impact on PC users worldwide. A large majority of PC users ignores the new operating system which is mostly distributed through PC sales where it is preinstalled.
Industry sources however claim that Windows 7, the successor of Windows Vista, will make its debut in the second half of 2009 which is only 18-24 months away from now. The Milestone 1 of Windows 7 has already been send out to key partners for validation purposes and a revised road map suggests a release in 2009.
I’m a bit confused by this move because I do not think that the world needs yet another Microsoft operating system. Most users are perfectly happy with Windows XP and do not want to change that operating system unless they have to. Microsoft’s plan to lure customers into using Windows Vista by making certain features Vista only, like DirectX10, was not that successful either. Mainly because DirectX 10 games are not produced on such a large scale yet.
There are not many information publicly available detailing new features that would make the new operating system a must have purchase, TG Daily puts it this way:
There are very few pieces of information about Windows 7 and the features it will bring available at this time. So far, we have heard only about new touchscreen features as well as – and probably most interesting – MinWin, a much smaller kernel of the operating system that takes up only 40 MB of memory.
Why would I change to yet another MS operating system ? I would only do so if it would offer something that would make a huge difference. This could be performance or security related for instance. When was support for Windows XP going to end ? In 2014 ?
What do you expect of a new operating system and what would make you change to the new one ?
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17 Responses to “Windows 7 to ship in 2009 ?”
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I would make the change if a Microsoft rep held a gun to my head and said to me: “Install Windows 7 or pay with your life”.
Other than that – I don’t think so…
Come to think of it, that should be a pretty successful business model…and not a very far cry from certain past practices of M$ either!
It’s not important, we’ll all have moved to Ubuntu by the second half of 2009 anyway.
The real innovation is coming from outside Redmond, and I expect Microsoft to buy the innovation and integrate it into their own products. I expect a new operating system from Microsoft to be cheaper (as in cost) than the old one.
These are my expectations of a new operating system from Microsoft. They should be pretty lean by now. Right?
I’m with Alan – Ubuntu and derivatives represent the end of Microsoft on the desktop. Thinking long term, though, there will be fewer C programmers (ones willing to donate time) and it will be harder to innovate with Linux. So in the end, we’re all going to pay again. That’s the real Linux challenge… how to sustain Linux after the hackers all pass on.
Hey maybe Sun will buy Linux too!
Actually, I do believe this sounds like good news for the majority of PC users/gamers, provided MS manages to provide with a semi-decent OS, which Vista is definitely not.
Hi again Martin,
You might be interested to know that Infoworld is running a “save XP” petition at http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp. They aim to ask Microsoft to continue selling and supporting XP indefinitely instead of stopping it soon.
I think windows 7 is going to good, they just ran out of cash so they released a partly made OS to get some back. (I’m using vista right now :S)
Ah! I can only hope that Infoworld becomes successful in their mission because XP deserves an even longer life span. I have tried Vista for a week or so and there is no doubt that visually it is very impressive. But apart from that I can’t see any reason to upgrade. And not to mention that it is terribly slow on many PCs. I can only hope that MS will look for customer needs before rolling out Windows7.
Vista visually impressive? Sorry mate, it’s not. Classic style > all. Eye candy in an operating system is lame in my opinion.
Alan, Brian Suojanen: linux users says that every year since 10 years. And linux still is unusable in home environment. Most application are for Windows, who would care about linux freaks? I wont. I love linux severs, I got one. But not on my desktop PC. Never.
Rick:
So use DOS. Would be better for you than Windows. It looks more professional. Maybe you would impress your girlfriend. But nowadays, in 2008 classic style is sh*t. I hate overweighted Windows and applications, but windows xp styles are super lightweight, so why not use them, if they make windows looks BETTER?
And to say a word about Windows 7:
Vista has a lot of inconveniences. The most one is speed and resources consumption. The VERY BEST choice for MS IMHO would be to improve significantly XP. At first should go drivers support. If Windows freezes it’s in 90% caused by bad drivers or other low level software. Also good choice would be if they make “Windows distributions”, like linux ones. For example one may want to distribute windows with Media player classic w/ realmedia/quicktime support, firefox, thunderbird and bunch of other free software. That would be a revolution.
Ha-ha, Thinker is right. Linux fans have been crying wolf for a while. We’re an optimistic bunch.
But tinkering with Linux beats shelling out $200 for an equally broken operating system.
I would switch and would recommend you all to switch too. by 2009, I can safely assume that 90% of you would be running a multi-core system. XP is a legacy OS designed for simple sequential machines. If you really want to take advantage of the multi-core goodness you will need a good kernel which windows 7 has. Don’t start berating microsoft, they did design the very best OS’s for a long time and I am pretty sure the innovation won’t stop there. And they are so cash rich that they can do a lot of impressive stuff.
Yeah, maybe vista didn’t work out, but office 2k7 kicks ass.
And I am a serious linux user (Slackware!) so I can assure you I am not a fanboy , but I know what I am talking about.
Microsoft, like too many other vendors, spends too much time on eye candy upgrades.
Also, as long as MS keeps building on the old NT core, they are limited to what they can change. They need to start from zero and build a whole new base.
I’d like to see:
- A TRUE multi-user system where all users have an entirely separate copy of ALL files. As it stands now, Windows isn’t true multiple user. All users share the same core libraries and OS files.
- Windows OS needs to be completely separate from the user application side. Application programs SHOULD NOT be able to store into Windows libraries. This would be easy to do by simply creating a new file construct called maybe \Windows\..\user which would be the user extension area for driver and application files.
- Recognition that with the huge new hard drives available that users are partitioning their drives into smaller logical drives. Everything no longer revolves around a single C: drive. Allow user settings to be installed on any logical drive easily.
- More control & visibility of the start-up process from boot. Also, related, the ability to better control the start-up process & prevent programs form inserting themselves into this process in native windows (some of us do this with add-on programs now).
- A new file system that plays off of today’s technology.
- Built-in imaging backup
- It shouldn’t take me 3-4 minutes to start-up Windows (until everything is ready to run).
- Trap & save BSOD info for the user through some kind of hypervisor. Right now, you have to hand copy it or take a photo of the screen. Makes it difficult to track incidents.
As for Ubuntu or some Linux variant replacing Windows, that is not going to happen until there is one Linux release instead of hundreds of variants, all different in many ways.
See:
http://www.technoledge.com.au/pdfs/linux_desktop.pdf
http://www.appscout.com/2007/10/from_windows_to_ubuntu_and_bac_1.php
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Joro says, “Microsoft, like too many other vendors, spends too much time on eye candy upgrades.”
Who are the other vendors? Apple? I’m curious about all these other OS vendors you speak of that spend too much time on eye candy. Do you not like eye candy?
Almost every requirement you list is currently available by default with Linux. The rest requires you to install additional software (it’s like freeware…but different).
And Thinker, what is “unusable” in the home about Linux? I’ve had just the opposite experience with XP and Vista. For example, I’ve had to go out a buy additional software to make XP “usable” [err...safe] on the Internet. I’ve had to buy additional software to watch my movie collection. And Vista thinks my 8 year-old laser printer is a 128MB storage device. Not very usable. Fortunately I’m a live CD away from fixing these problems.
I do look forward to the next offering from MS though. It’s makes for good fodder.
Ubuntu is a nice OS, it’s quite useable. BUT in case of a PROBLEM you have to dive into the deeps of a DOS-like puristic console. Nothing for the average-user…
To be honest, I don’t really understand why MS is pushing 7 so hard.
VISTA might not be the revolution some expected, but it’s a decent OS. There are quite a lot improvements in here and there, nothing revolutionary, but solid. There is much VISTA “bashing” of XP-users, trying to justify why they don’t switch.
Don’T know what MS expected, but I think they were naive, if they thought that everybody would jump on VISTA, and they are too ,if they think it’s goin to be different with Windows 7! From my point of view, the times where a new OS would change the way of computing (remember Windows 95???) are over. And this is good! I’m with duryodhan here. Office 2007 ROCKS! And it’s a much more important piece of innovation than VISTA or Win 7 will ever be.
Why would anyone want to upgrade to vista or any other windows thing. Linux so much more reliable and faster, and hacker free (pclinux user). only use windows for my SE phone as wine does not like the software disc2phone.