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Microsoft Operating Systems Software

Windows 7 in the Next Year? 385

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the also-duke-nukem-forever dept.
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.
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Windows 7 in the Next Year? More

Windows 7 in the Next Year?

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  • I don't think so (Score:3, Insightful)

    by joaommp ( 685612 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @07:22AM (#22971928) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:5, Funny)

      by 2.7182 ( 819680 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @07:25AM (#22971938)
      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 (Score:4, Insightful)

        by canuck57 ( 662392 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @10:02AM (#22972648)

        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:I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:06AM (#22972066) Journal

      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.

      • 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

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by TheQuantumShift ( 175338 )
          "* Instead of babysitting the user with endless "Cancel Allow" dialogs, allow some programs (administrator-defined) to run as administrator (i.e. root) by adding a popup dialog to ask the password. Add the possibility of remembering the password FOR THIS SESSION ONLY."

          Sounds good, but remember, the average windows users' session last 2.3 years. Laptops? 4.8. Hell most users only log off when the power goes out.

  • I find that hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AC-x ( 735297 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @07:25AM (#22971936)
    Next year? they haven't even started beta yet have they?

    • Re:I find that hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bcmm ( 768152 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @07:54AM (#22972030)
      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 (Score:4, Insightful)

        by BountyX ( 1227176 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:03AM (#22972054)
        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 (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Orange Crush ( 934731 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:25AM (#22972116)
          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 (Score:5, Funny)

          by Kensai7 ( 1005287 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @10:51AM (#22972934)
          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.
      • 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. We're still waiting for the revolutionary file system that Cairo was supposed to bring over a decade ago. The difference now is busineses know what about Linux with all the pros and cons of using Linux over Windows.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by 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.
      • Wouldn't that more likely stop the already slow migration from XP to Vista? I think since XP is still available that most businesses will just stick with it (until it becomes unbearable which is hardly the case....) if they can.

        Now, maybe they actually want to slow the sales of Vista for some reason. But I'll leave it to another to extrapolate.

        • Re:I find that hard to believe (Score:5, Informative)

          by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @09:06AM (#22972362)
          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.

      • +1 Insightful (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:33AM (#22972144) Homepage
        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".

    • Microsoft: "The whole world is our beta tester." (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @09:22AM (#22972432) Homepage
      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.
      • XP *still* doesn't handle USB that well. Buy a cheap new inkjet printer & plug it in before you run the install CD. See what happens.

        Same thing happened not that long ago with a Sony digital camera I was gifted. Thankfully we've got more than one computer.
        • maybe i've been lucky but i've generally found that even when the manufacturer says install first plug in later you can usually plug in first and install later then just unplug and plug back in the device so it re-enumerates.

          I'm sure theese problems do happen but i'm more inclined to blame the device manfuacturer/driver writer than microsoft for theese kinds of problems given the number of devices that don't suffer from them.
    • they haven't even started beta yet have they?

      Microsoft wouldn't use vaporware announcements to dampen interest in DR-DOS ^W competitors' products would they?

    • Next year? they haven't even started beta yet have they?
      We'll be the beta testers, same as always.
  • But I doubt it'll be a whole new OS. I reckon they'll just change Vista enough so that it doesn't suck anymore. That, combined with a slightly different GUI, and they'll hope they have a successful OS on their hands.
    • So basically re-release XP then? :P

  • 2-3 years is normal for Windows (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Vista was released late 2006/early 2007. Windows has had 2-3 year release cycles for most of its life up to Vista (and if you want to count Server 2003, Vista isn't that far off). So end 2009 for the next release is pretty much in line with past releases.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 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 (Score:5, Informative)

        by Martin Blank ( 154261 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @09:11AM (#22972384) Homepage Journal
        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.
        • I guess my point is if Windows 7 is as fundamentally different in the design as MS claims it to be, they are starting from scratch which will take longer than they time they claim. Vista took 2-3 years after MS decided to use Windows 2003 codebase instead of the original codebase. They had already spent 2 years on that effort before abandoning it and many of the features. But they had an existing codebase and still the effort took a few years.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by 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.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            When has Microsoft said that Windows 7 is "fundamentally different in design" from previous versions?

            I know that various people on /. have said that Windows 7 is fundamentally different. But I don't know that I've ever heard that from anyone who claims to work at Microsoft.

            About the only thing that I've heard about Windows 7 is this "minwin" stuff, and as best as I can figure, that's just shuffling chairs on the bridge deck - they've moved code around to make it so that they can boot the OS with a minimal
        • It's not that hard to sell `functionality' in a booming economy, especially when the limitations of the existing product are obvious. But abstruse functionality like WFS, which will provide essentially nothing for end-users because only an idiot is going to market applications which only work on the latest version of Windows, is a pretty hard sell when the economy is heading into recession. Microsoft were able to ride the fact that computers went from ``we all want them to be faster'' to ``yes, that's pre

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by 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 (Score:3, Informative)

          by melted ( 227442 )
          Office 2007 was 6 months late. And that's just for UI overhaul.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pembo13 ( 770295 )
        Do we have any proof that this is true.
    • Exactly. Besides, I really remember stories on here and elsewhere about how Windows 7 was being developed parallel to Vista. They might be putting more resources behind it and rushing it out the door more because of Vista's unforeseen suckitude, but I would have expected a new version in 2010 anyway.

      It seems to me that 7 is going to have all of the stuff (new file system, etc) that was mostly-but-not-quite ready for Vista, development that was mostly completed a year ago anyway.

  • This means (Score:2, Funny)

    by eclectro ( 227083 )
    Slashdot April Fool's post is four days late. Hahahaha. Not as funny as the ponies thing though.

  • Breaking API compatibilty...release in 1 year? No. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ChangeOnInstall ( 589099 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @07:49AM (#22972012)
    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).
    • Binaries incompatible Windows 7 would be a godsend..... but if only IBM/some_other_donor_of_programmer_and_money stuck a major amount of resources into Wine the year before:)
      • We don't need binary compatibility anymore. legacy apps can run in virtual machines. you can bet that microsoft will incorporate some kind of basix xp legacy vm into windows 7 to solve any compatibility issue that may arise.
    • Breaking binary compatibility would make development considerably *easier*, not harder.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by 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: (Score:2)

          by Eddi3 ( 1046882 )
          "Sometimes you just need to flush the whole lot down the crapper and start [new.]"

          Normally, yes. The problem is, in Windows' case, there are now people congregated around the individual pieces of shit in the toilet bowl. They rely, quite heavily, on this shits' magical powers in order to get shit done. So, in this case, flushing everything down and restarting clean would also flush down all the people. The toilet would still be there, but its product (the shit), and supporters would be gone.

          - Eddie

    • Re:Breaking API compatibilty...release in 1 year? (Score:5, Informative)

      by sw155kn1f3 ( 600118 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:40AM (#22972178)
      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.
    • 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.
  • With WinXP Prof EOL this year June, what's the alternative to Vista?
    At my last customer job, XP was still the set OS, with no Vista supported or even allowed. For the notebooks they buyed in Germany, the supplier still offered XP, but we had inquiries from South America, where the only OS available was Vista. I wonder what they will do, if the only notebooks available will no longer work with XP due to new hardware and no XP-drivers.

    • You ask about alternatives ?, my story

      I bought a HP laptop pavilion dv9000, with vista (next time I will buy something with better linux support). I wanted to make the recovery CD, before using it, just to be sure to be able to receover the machine. (You cannot buy a barebone laptop nowdays, not at CDCpoint.it or Esprinet.com)

      Vista did not even allow me to make the recovery DVD without agreeing on the EULA, and therefore I ZAPPED everything and installed UBUNTU

      I have the usual office programs OpenOffice

    • With WinXP Prof EOL this year June, what's the alternative to Vista?
      Please clarify what you mean by EOL.

      It seems like you are reffering to the end of retail and big brand OEM availibility. This is mostly irrelevent to big companies as they will have volume licenses with downgrade rights.

      What does matter is whether the hardware vendor will supply XP drivers. This is already a problem with some laptop vendors but there are also plenty who still support XP.

      wonder what they will do, if the only notebooks availa

  • Should we stay or should we go now (to Vista)? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lancejjj ( 924211 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:05AM (#22972064) Homepage
    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.

  • If you are a windows who^H^H^Huser then this is unlikely to be great news:

    1. You've stuck with XP, and windows 7 is just an incremental upgrade of that - you end up paying hundreds for what amounts to a service pack and a polish of the UI

    2. You've gone to Vista, and windows 7 is just an incremental upgrade of that. Same as above. Really fucking expensive service pack for an already expensive OS

    3. You've gone to Vista, but windows 7 is basically just XP. Thankyou for your generous contribution to the B

  • Look you guys, we built an operating system with your crappy DRM ideas built in and guess what? It didn't work too well. The entire point of a computer is to copy data accurately and as soon as you mess with that, you get a crappy result. It's not so much "garbage in, garbage out" as "quality in, garbage out".

    So, Vista didn't work too well and it's your fault. The RIAA and MPAA can take DRM and shove it where the sun don't shine. Microsoft is now a born again anti-DRM company and there is nothing you c

  • Windows 7 overlords (Score:3, Funny)

    by sw155kn1f3 ( 600118 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:34AM (#22972152)
    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" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:35AM (#22972156)
    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]

  • Too little, too late (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Stu101 ( 1031686 )
    It has been said before, but this has cost them dear.

    Our company (50 Mill turnover a year) used to be completely Microsoft all the way, including eOpen Office licenses etc and no Linux servers. Now we have rolled out a lot of linux backroom machines. Not because of cost, just because MS is becoming harder and harder to work with. Add to that the fact that i've become a very big supporter of OSS and the ethics of OSS.

    Our next decision is not "do we upgrade to Vista +1" but "Which business linux distro best s
    • They lost your company, but to prevent further damage, they *have* to release a new (business desktop) OS within a year and a half from now. All those "complete rewrite to fix the mess" ideas are great, but they take five years to develop and five more years to iron out before it becomes a really stable working product. Enough time for Apple and Linux to take over a lot of the market.

      I think Windows 7 will be XP + some extra stuff. A bit more extra stuff than a service pack, but not a lot. Maybe some better

  • New distribution method for new OS (Score:5, Funny)

    by zmollusc ( 763634 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @08:51AM (#22972246)
    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.

  • *Maybe* they'll pull it off, but this is Microsoft and this is a Microsoft operating system. It's pretty much guaranteed to be late.

    I agree with other posters who say this is another marketing ploy to keep businesses interested in Windows despite the Vista fiasco.

    For our part we're going to get new computers with XP for as long as possible (so convenient that 30 June is the end of our fiscal year) and maybe re-image with XP after that, as long as there's drivers available.

  • Windows Vista, the new ME (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kostya ( 1146 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @09:12AM (#22972392) Homepage Journal
    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! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Groggnrath ( 1089073 ) <lukasdoyle431@msn.com> on Saturday April 05, 2008 @09:28AM (#22972460)
    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.
  • Once that comes out, they can expect a lot of sales, if in fact its totally incompatible with what we have today.

    Such a scam.

  • Are people finally admitting that Vista is worse than XP was when it was first launched?

  • Microsoft imitating Apple, perhaps? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Aggrajag ( 716041 ) * on Saturday April 05, 2008 @11:30AM (#22973146)
    With BSD backend, I guess the development could progress that quickly and that would explain breaking the ABI rumor that I've heard.

  • Understanding Windows release cycles. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kaenneth ( 82978 ) on Saturday April 05, 2008 @04:45PM (#22974966) Journal
    Windows 3.0, 95, ME, and Vista were terrible for users at first.
    Windows 3.1, 98, XP, and whatever Win7 will be named are much better.
    Windows 3.11, 98 OSR2, XP SP2, and Win7 + Whatever it's 2nd service release will be named are/will be good.

    95/98 are version 4.XX, ME/XP is the 5.XX series (although ME reports itself as 4.9), Vista is 6.0; and "Win7" will probably effectivly be 6.XX, even if it reports as 7.0

    Each new series introduces new APIs for Driver and Application developers; the later releases depricate old API's, while refining the newer ones, so the earlier releases of a series have buggy new APIs mixed with obsolete APIs.

    As an example, Windows Media Player is still 32 bit on Vista 64 bit; I would guess that is because Codecs are in-process .DLLs, and trying to have a 32 bit codec process data over the 4GB mark would be a disaster. (This would also be why device drivers are locked down on 64 bit Vista; they would be easy to test on a 64 bit CPU with only 2-4 gigs of RAM, but would epic-fail after the 4GB mark, causing random crashes and corruption.

    Windows 7 will be released after application and driver developers have had time to get used to 64 bitness, along with IPv6, DirectX 10 (Which allows GPU preemtive multitasking.), etc. etc. it will be a lot more stable, and can reduce support for older APIs (from the 16 bit era, just as ME/XP dropped a lot of support for DOS applications); but I suspect a lot of unexpected things will be dropped to improve security (for example, in Vista, you can't drag-n-drop into a Command Prompt window, I read this was to prevent security issues)

    So, Vista SP1 should fix the 'critical' problems with Vista; Win7 will correct some design flaws, and be more consistant, Win7 +Service packs will have both design fixes and then the critical fixes to those design changes... then everyone will absolutly hate Windows 8.

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