Windows 7 in the Next Year?

Microsoft's efforts to get businesses to adopt Vista may come to a screeching halt now that Bill Gates has announced "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version", referring to Windows 7, the next expected version of the company's flagship desktop operating system.With a new version available soon, many organizations may decide to wait and see if they can avoid the pain of a Vista rollout altogether.

I don't think so

[joaommp (685612)]

They may very well test it a bit longer and delay it a bit in the end just to make sure another vistaesque fiasco doesn't roll out.

Nah, not really

[2.7182 (819680)]

they will release it, but it will just be a repackaged version of xp. They probably want to switch back to it without anyone really knowing. It like the "new coke"

Brilliant actually

[canuck57 (662392)]

they will release it, but it will just be a repackaged version of xp. They probably want to switch back to it without anyone really knowing. It like the "new coke"

Brilliant actually. Lets see, you buy a PC at Best Buy and can only get Vista on it. So you go to another shop, and buy a copy of XP and install it. So far a double dip.

Now, next year you shell out more cash and will want to upgrade to Win7. The triple dip, Brilliant.

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

That would be awesome, but their death sentence. Can you imagine if all 'Vista compatible' apps were also almost 100% compatible with Linux? It's the stuff that wet dreams are made of.. uh.. I mean.. oh whatever ..

Re:Nah, not really

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

I'm not so sure that having all Vista compatible apps also Linux compatible would be the "death sentence" for Microsoft.

If there was a company that made a "professional, commercial" Linux-type OS that could run all Windows programs natively, I'd not only buy 5 copies, but stock in the company.

Hell, I'd tattoo their logo on my neck.

Re:

[Knuckles (8964)]

Where would you like your 5 copies of Mac OS X sent?

I would think that "Linux-like" includes "Free".

Re:Nah, not really

[Knuckles (8964)]

Then how the hell would he buy 5 copies?

Support the company? Besides, they make great gifts.

Re:

[AmaranthineNight (1005185)]

sorry, but OS X isn't UNIX.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html [apple.com]

Yes it is.

Re:

[omega_dk (1090143)]

The not/or sentence construction is grammatically incorrect, unless you mean that OSX is

(not linux-like) or (able to run Windows apps natively)

Proper usage would be to say,

Mac OSX is neither Linux-like nor able to run a Windows app natively.

Now that that's out of the way:
Mac OSX is, for all intents and purposes, Linux-like. It includes a BSD-derived kernel, and I can use a lot of standard GNU tools, either direct from Apple or through MacPorts, Fink, etc. But for the sake of argument, lets go through the two definitions of Linux-like

So if your definition of Linux-like uses Linux as a kernel, then yes, OSX is Linux-like b

Re:

[penix1 (722987)]

You just got to love the Mac OS X fans trying to blunt the fact that OS X is just as bad as Microsoft at being closed source and that Apple will sue out of existence anyone distributing it just like Microsoft. You see, that is the main "linux like" item you totally ignore. The fact that the license allows re-distribution in Linux is one of its strongest points. The fact that I can modify it to suit my needs instead of at the whim of some corporation is another.

Re:

[civilizedINTENSITY (45686)]

WinXP, at least, booted faster and closed faster and seemed *more* responsive to me using VMWare on top of Linux than running on the bare metal. Wish I'd tested that setup more thoroughly...

Re:

[mollymoo (202721)]

It's been a long while since I play with Java GUI stuff, but it would have to be a hell of a lot better than it was to convince me it was worth using for anything other than the most trivial desktop apps. [...] Hmm, a quick search finds SWT has come on a bit and might be a viable alternative. Having said that, I assume Eclipse itself uses SWT and Eclipse has always had a treacle-like GUI on every platform I've tried it on (the last time being about 6 months ago on OS X). I don't know if that's down to Eclip

Re:

[Minimalist360 (1258970)]

Or, it'll be some basic HAL that runs a functional .NET CLR, and version 4.0 of the .NET framework will be the new Windows API. The old binaries will break, but can run hypervisor-style in an older version of the OS, XP-like but with DirectX 10.2. Or something.

I know they love the CLR. And for good reason, with the framework and some of the newer goodies in there, it's pretty darned swell.

Then they will just keep adding functionality and features there, and stay one step ahead of the Mono folks and co

Re:I don't think so

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

They may very well test it a bit longer and delay it a bit in the end just to make sure another vistaesque fiasco doesn't roll out.

I'm not sure "not enough testing" was what made Vista such an unpleasant experience for many of us.

I think it had more to do with problems with design and implementation. Arguably, you could say there are also issues with the overall scope of what MS was trying to accomplish with Vista.

I want these feature please...

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

Arguably, you could say there are also issues with the overall scope of what MS was trying to accomplish with Vista.

Heh, I'm still waiting for the database-based filesystem they bragged so much about when they talked about... Longhorn.

Microsoft is desperate. They can't innovate, they're running out of ideas, and they can't find something so attractive to make users switch.

But here are a few ideas of mine that would make Windows a guaranteed success:

* Revamp the configuration. Slice the configuration for app

I find that hard to believe

[AC-x (735297)]

Next year? they haven't even started beta yet have they?

Re:I find that hard to believe

[bcmm (768152)]

Of course it won't be ready by then. They'll keep putting the date back. But they hope that if they keep saying it's almost ready, businesses won't get impatient and migrate to Linux.

Re:I find that hard to believe

[BountyX (1227176)]

It's a marketing ploy. They are trying to say to the world "ok we screwed up, look were already making a better one". By making it seem like they quickly fixed the "Vista" bug, it gives their consumers more confidence.

Re:I find that hard to believe

[Orange Crush (934731)]

Isn't that what Vista SP1 was supposed to be? Folks have been getting Vista on new computers and some poor saps even bought it off store shelves. I know better than to get a MS OS before at least a year and a service pack or two. Many do not. Releasing the next version as quickly as possible rather than fixing or replacing what people already paid for does not inspire consumer confidence. (Kinda like how they handled Windows ME . . .)

Re:I find that hard to believe

[Kensai7 (1005287)]

Has anyone noticed a pattern here? Microsoft seems to screw an OS every other release: Windows 95, great! Windows 98, not so great. Windows 98SE, great! Windows ME, disaster! Windows XP, great! Windows Vista, disaster!

Will "Vista Reloaded" be again a hit?! I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

Re:I find that hard to believe

[ianare (1132971)]

2000, something new, not completely ready XP, getting better Vista, try too much and completely fail

• NT4 , something new, not completely ready
• 2000, mostly everything fixed
• XP, try a little too much and fail
• Vista, try way too much, fail completely

TFTFY

+1 Insightful

[Joce640k (829181)]

This announcement is all about keeping up momentum and stopping people from looking elsewhere.

OF COURSE it won't be released next year, or even the year after. They'll want to "get it 100% right this time".

Re:I find that hard to believe

[CastrTroy (595695)]

The way microsoft changes everything as far as administration goes I'm surprised the admins haven't revolted yet. You have to relearn, and recertify every time a new release comes out. With Linux, different distros have different GUIs for admin tasks, but that's just GUI. You can do everything for admin from the command line, and nothing has really changed much in the last 15 years.

Re:

[jimicus (737525)]

Yeah, for all MS professes to have advanced, they still are doing the same things gave them their bad reputation. Developers and businesses are not as gullible as they once were.

That's why there are companies lining up to provide the software that's missing in Linux, certain that the Linux Desktop in business is the Next Big Thing.

Microsoft: "The whole world is our beta tester."

[Futurepower(R) (558542)]

Bill Gates: "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version".

Quoting the parent comment: "Next year? they haven't even started beta yet have they?"

You are forgetting what appears to be a core Microsoft philosophy: "The whole world is our beta tester."

The problem with Vista is that buyers are becoming technically knowledgeable enough that they don't want to be beta testers of a very unfinished product that requires them to buy more powerful hardware. Remember that Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released only 3 years ago. Before that was 3 years during which every Windows XP customer was a beta tester of a very unfinished product that didn't even handle USB very well.

Sometimes it seems to me that Microsoft is not primarily a software company that is abusive, but an abuse company that sells software as a method of delivering abuse.

Remember that a "new version" can be as little as moving the menus around and causing everyone a lot of annoyance, as Microsoft did with IE 7. There should be a song, "50 ways to abuse the customer."

The end comes soon, and Microsoft is trying to delay the end. With XP, most users have all the operating system they want. Except for the built-in susceptibility to malware, Windows XP is acceptable. Customers just want to do their work. They don't sit around all day dreaming about new features of an OS.

For most of Microsoft's customers, there is no need for change, especially when they realize that the Chief of Grief, software's Dr. Death, will quickly declare the death of that version, too, as it tried to do with Windows XP.

Another problem at Microsoft is apparently that the good people have left, and the people who remain are not knowledgeable enough to do the work. Microsoft's employees know the end is near, and the creative programmers have already left. Only those who just want a job remain.

Re:Microsoft: "The whole world is our beta tester.

[TheLink (130905)]

For printers and some other stuff I often try to avoid running the "installer from the CD", because that usually puts tons of useless crap into your computer.

I usually try to look for the Win2K/XP directory where the "real driver" is stored, and then point windows to it.

If XP gets the wrong driver and you want to rerecognize the stuff again, just go to control panel and delete the relevant "?" stuff in device manager (the question mark icon for the device indicates it's not properly installed etc).

Most times it's the manufacturers who mess things up.

That said, NEVER install hardware drivers from Windows Update.

Re:

[wall0159 (881759)]

Can you please tell me what colour socks you wear when you do all this? I've never found the colour that makes it behave...

Or maybe I'm paying off the wrong witchdoctor.

Breaking API compatibilty...release in 1 year? No.

[ChangeOnInstall (589099)]

Didn't we just read that they're breaking binary compatibility with Windows XP/Vista in 7? I laud them for doing this, but the idea that a modular, completely-rethought, bloat-free, and binary incompatible Windows is one year away strikes me as nothing short of absurd. The only cases I can see where both of these facts being correct is either that 7 has been in development for at least three years, or the new item is a steaming pile.

The more likely scenario is that we're being mislead (e.g., the inference that he's talking about Windows 7 is wrong, or that the previous article today regarding binary incompatibility is hogwash).

Re:Breaking API compatibilty...release in 1 year?

[blind biker (1066130)]

Breaking binary compatibility would make development considerably *easier*, not harder.

Re:

[Computershack (1143409)]

Breaking binary compatibility would make development considerably *easier*, not harder.

Indeed. WinME was shite because it tried to maintain Win98 compatibility. WinVista is shite because it's trying to maintain Win2k/XP compatibility.
Sometimes you just need to flush the whole lot down the crapper and start with a clean sheet.

Re:Breaking API compatibilty...release in 1 year?

[sw155kn1f3 (600118)]

Yesterday article about binary incompatibility was just a troll and some fellow slashdotter already pointed to this:
http://blog.paulbetts.org/index.php/2008/04/04/dear-dev-corvin/ [paulbetts.org]
This is a short answer from MS employee. Can't be more clear, because entire article was complete bullshit.

Re:Breaking API compatibilty...release in 1 year?

[Nimey (114278)]

Most likely this "Windows 7" is a marketing name for what's really planned as a 6.1 release (Vista being 6.0).

That or they're lying; Windows 7 being the next major refresh of Windows in maybe five years but they're wanting you to think about the neat cool stuff while they're actually just talking about a point release next year.

Or, since this is Slashdot, it's sensationalism.

Should we stay or should we go now (to Vista)?

[lancejjj (924211)]

We've been studying Vista at work, and our decision for now (which holds through at least Sepember) is to stick with XP. All the new PCs have Vista installed, and we're downgrading them to XP before deployment to customer's desks. Thank goodness for Microsoft's advancements in deploying XP!

The short story - we certainly don't want 1/3rd XP, 1/3rd Vista, and 1/3rd Win7, and that's what it is looking like when we don our future-hats.

So we decided this week that we'll stay with XP for as long as we can, using the principle that it is less expensive to support XP today, and we have no idea where Vista and Win7 will be. And we'll still have plenty of time to upgrade across the board if MS sticks with their current XP sunset plan.

We'll only start deploying Vista when Microsoft gives us clarity on the Win7 timeline, or when we conclude that Vista support will be less expensive than XP to support, or when we feel that we need to start converting to meet Microsoft's XP retirement plans.

Windows 7 overlords

[sw155kn1f3 (600118)]

Dear Zo^H^HBill,

We're trying as fast as we can to reach that Earth planet we were talking about recently, but our board computer we upgraded to Windows Vista, crashed several times, which resulted our ship to be put for few years on Uranus orbit, so we won't be able to reach that Earth planet before the what earthlings call year 2011.

Thanks for understanding,
Forever yours,
Windows 7 overlords.

Please stop quoting UPENN on "wait and see"

[by Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for woefully misrepresenting the nature of Penn's "wait and see" suggestion regarding Vista SP1. Penn's IT org gives that advice regarding virtually every major OS update published by any vendor. In fact, Mac OS 10.5 is was also "wait and see"'d on first release for the exact same reasons. http://www.upenn.edu/computing/provider/docs/originalmacos105provider.html [upenn.edu]

New distribution method for new OS

[zmollusc (763634)]

What is more remarkable than the new version of windows that will be delivered next year is that it will be distributed NOT by boxes of CDs on shop shelves, NOT by pre-installation on hard disks of new machines and NOT EVEN by microsoft update. It will be hand delivered by monkeys flying out of my butt.

Windows Vista, the new ME

[Kostya (1146)]

Wow. I guess we can just count Vista as stillborn at this point. Oh sure, there's no way 7 will be out next year (try late 2009, most likely late 2010). But Gates announcing 7 that quickly, it's like he was trying to put a stake through Vista's heart.

Hopefully they had a lot of reusable concepts and code that they can leverage. Otherwise, that's an awful waste of code and effort.

Longhorn next year!

[Groggnrath (1089073)]

This is simply the way MS operates. Windows 7 will be due out next year, for the next 3 years.

It'll be right around the corner, or almost to Beta for at least 2 years, only to have the whole thing scrapped because it's too hard to program anything not NT based.

Microsoft imitating Apple, perhaps?

[Aggrajag (716041)]

With BSD backend, I guess the development could progress that quickly and that would explain breaking the ABI rumor that I've heard.

Re:

[squidinkcalligraphy (558677)]

Microsoft has enough cash reserves to operate for at least a year without selling a single product. If they focused everything on developing Windows 7, then they might, just, have something in a year. Of course, they've been working on it for a while already. That said, they don't have a particularly good track record on delivering these kinds of things (OS's) in the timeframes they say...

Re:Ground up

[murr (214674)]

Microsoft has enough cash reserves to operate for at least a year without selling a single product. If they focused everything on developing Windows 7, then they might, just, have something in a year.

That's about as likely as getting 9 women to have a baby in one month.

Re:

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

If they focused everything on developing Windows 7, then they might, just, have something in a year.

Read this [blogspot.com] and tell me if you still think that.

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[somersault (912633)]

I think the core of Amiga OS was written by one guy who locked himself in a dark room for a few days :P Can't remember the exact timeframe. Too many cooks spoil the broth and all that..

Re:

[UnknowingFool (672806)]

Yes but all those releases were incremental upgrades to Windows. They changed parts but the overall design of Windows was the same. Vista took so long because it was a rather large change in the design of Windows. Windows 7 is a complete rethinking. I doubt that could take 2-3 years.

Re:2-3 years is normal for Windows

[Martin Blank (154261)]

Vista took that long because they scrapped almost all of their work half-way through, a great example of extraordinarily poor project management. We've seen mention here at Slashdot of the enormous resources poured into just the shutdown screen. They were behind schedule, over budget, and missed their goals to an unacceptable extent, but they had to be able to recoup the investment, so it got pushed out the door.

Meanwhile, Steven Sinofsky was over running the Office 2007 program, which delivered essentially on-time and on-budget, hitting almost all of the goals. (I know a lot of people don't like the interface, but that's a separate point from the project management.) Sinofsky was promoted to oversee Windows development, and inherited the mess left behind by Jim Allchin. The earlier Slashdot article alluding to a complete overhaul of Windows may well be his doing, an attempt to get the focus back where it needs to be in order to not have a fiasco the next time around. We may even finally see the emergence of WFS finally.

Re:

[DannyO152 (544940)]

I also look at the two-year extension given to XP in the ULCPC market as an indicator of when Microsoft expects Windows 7 to land.

My barely-informed opinion is that we'll never see WFS. Search technologies, parallel processors, and virtual directories (smart folders) have obviated the idea that files need a relational database overlay in order to facilitate structured storage and convenient retrieval. Files and the reasons a person saves and the reasons a person retrieves are a many-to-many-squared hairbal

Actually, you're wrong

[melted (227442)]

Office 2007 was 6 months late. And that's just for UI overhaul.

Re:

[Martin Blank (154261)]

That depends on how much they're bringing forward. When including legacy functionality, a tremendous amount of work has to happen to preserve it within a new framework, whereas writing new code that adheres to design goals can be (though not always is) easier to do.

It will be interesting to see how it turns out. I'll be happy just to see them shrink the install size back down to a useful level.

Paradigm shifts and evil empires

[DrYak (748999)]

I've been betting on Google for the next Evil Empire (for one thing, I like the irony), but Apple just might have a shot.

I definitely bet on Google.

See everytime the previous evil empire falls and a new one emerge, we all see a shift in the paradigms f evil empires. It's not a coincidence that an "Evil" empire has become evil. It's because it has become quite efficient at the kind of abuse that are necessary to secure a position, in the "Evil Corp" world. And it won't be easy for a concurrent to replace it in the exact same position. Usually the concurrent replace them by making them irrelevant.

Usually, Evil Corps die in the way of obsolescence. Take the previous old evil empire : IBM.
IBM has achieved a huge monopoly in the market place based on the hardware they were selling.
And they got replaced by Microsoft, which is basically a software company (or an abuse company occasionally selling software as pointed by some /.ers higher in the thread). All this switch happened, because computer got commoditised. During the IBM era, you had to go to IBM to buy specific mainframes. At the end of IBM's kingship you could buy a PC from them, but also buy a PC-compatible from any other nameless vendor from around the world. Wherever you bought your hardware from, you could install your OS (...DOS from Microsoft...) on it. The fact that the hardware was from IBM became irrelevant, hardware didnt' matter anymore.

The current evil empire(tm) is a software empire. And they have built their empire on a ground of software monopoly. You have to buy your OS from them, there are the only one selling Windows. What makes Google the best candidate to be the "Next Evil Empire", is that there a good potential to shift paradigm and make the current software-based busyness model obsolete. Microsoft has a solid ground for a software monopoly, only as long as people need to buy their specific software.
Google isn't a company based around software. It's a company which uses standards instead. What they provide are information services : searches, mails, maps, whatever. And they are bloody good at it because they can leverage a decade long experience in data processing/clustering, a decade worth of data mining, tons of different kind of database that they can cross-reference, etc.
But also, all their application are built around standards : most of their service are web applications built around pretty plain standard-compliant HTML.
Whichever software you have installed on you PC doesn't matter anymore. It could be Windows, it could be Mac OS X, it could be one of the dozen nameless Linux-based distribution. As long as it can display HTML properly, it can work.

The same way Microsoft replaced IBM once the PC became a commodity, the same way Google and similar service providers will replace Microsoft once the OS becomes a commodity.

Also, what make specifically Google a potential Evil Corp among other factor, is that once in place they will be hard to compete against.
IBM secured their position because it was hard at that time for another company to come up with competing hardware.
Microsoft secured its position, because of vendor lock-in, no standard-compliance, being the target of most 3rd party applications, etc. : In the beginning some competitors could pull a competing OS, but it won't see adoption because it wouldn't be compatible with all the applications that the Microsoft users already had.

Google will probably secure its position because of the massive amount of experience and data they can leverage. To be performant as a service providing company, a company will probably need very efficient algorithms to process their data, and massive amount of data to process to provide services from. To take the example of websearches, Google have an important head start, because they have had 10 years to perfect their algos, they had 10 years to collect massive amount of data about all pages available on the web, and more i

Re:A GOOD Windows OS

[yuna49 (905461)]

Why does everyone seem to think Microsoft introduced the various DRM components into Vista because Hollywood pointed a gun at their heads? Isn't it apparent to everyone that Microsoft is also becoming a purveyor of content as well as computer software (and a variety of other products, of course)? I wouldn't at all be surprised to see Microsoft buy a studio in the next decade assuming they could get it past the Antitrust Division.