Pretty much what they've been saying.

Bill mentioned that we should see Windows-7 in 2009.

Of course, that is far more likely to be Dec-2009 than Jan-2009.

Previously they had been saying to anyone who would listen, Windows-7 3 years from the release of Vista... which was RTM's in Nov-2006 and publically released in Jan-2007.

Late 2009 is pretty much on track with the existing 3year time-line they had already set.

32bit???

I thought that they already announced there would be no further 32bit desktop OSs about a year ago?

Vista's panties

Vista is great, the more I use it the more I enjoy it.

And Windows 7 is just going to be an updated Vista isn't it. Face facts, biased Inq folks.

Windows 7

I think windows 7 is just what the linux crowd needs.

If microsoft rushes yet another half baked product that no one really needs out the door it should cement its position in laughing stock hall of fame.


P.S.

Will it still need to be defragged constantly and re-installed every 6 months?

lessons learned?

Our current OS iteration is crap, so let's rush out the next one ... there's no way I can say that in my head without it sounding like a bad idea.

Time line

> Sir William Gates III told the Inter-American Development Bank: "Sometime in the next year or two we will have a new version."

So that'll be sometime in the next year or TWO, so we'll say by about 2010.

> Vole officially expects to ship the successor to Vista roughly three years from Vista's January 2007 debut

So that'll be around 2010. I don't particularly care for, or even use the OS, but i'm failing to see the "news" here - what a long time you took to publish this non-story.

Sheez

Nice...

...anyone remember Windows ME? If this article is not just based on rumour, we can now officially call Vista "Windows ME 2", I assume.

BTW - nothing personal against Windows ME. I still have it running on a private laptop, and it has served me humbly and stable for the last years.

Finally something worth getting

Vista's panties
Vista is great, the more I use it the more I enjoy it.

And Windows 7 is just going to be an updated Vista isn't it. Face facts, biased Inq folks.

Thanks for stating the obvious but Every windows os so far has been an updated version of the previous but windows 7 isnt going to be as they are rebuilding the Core Kernal from scratch this time round cutting all the legacy shizzle out of it.

sounds good but one theing they SERIOUSLY need to do with this new one is add a Custom install options for ALL windows components and allow you to do it like back in windows 98 now it was the customisavle windows, since i dont fancy having half a ton of stuff i dont use and a couple gigs worth of useless drivers i willl never use on my hard drive.

i like my cpu cycles being free and my hard drive being clean to be used for stuff i am going to use, i dont care there getting bigger i prefer efficiency over bloat and hopefully with this new rebuild of the core 7 should be half decent for once

Where do I want to go today?

We have already dumped MSWindows products for Open source (gnu/linux, bsd, and freedos). Windows 7 is already too little too late and it is not even here yet, Deja vu. Did not we go through this route with win nt and win2k. Where do I want to go today? Not Microsoft.......

Beta Tester?

Please someone invite to be beta tester. I am eager to test one. If it is like vista, than I just need to find one importart bug to get the retail one. I just confuse why Microsoft is release the 32 bit version of Windows 7. Hopefully this will make:
- Vista be populer, people hate Windows 7 and love Vista (de ja vu everybody?)
- Windows 7 is minnor than Vista so that people like it.
Which one will happen?
Guest it :D

The same promises since 1991

We have a radical vision for $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It's definitely the one to wait for. You should avoid buying any other operating system or even looking at them until you see $NEXT_VERSION ... Except Vista, of course. That's pretty good. But $NEXT_VERSION is just so amazing. Wow™! It's the most fantastic thing ever. Incredible. Mac OS 10.4 can't possibly hold a candle to it.

I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will surely go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, that will be all fixed with $NEXT_VERSION. And they’ll finally be ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF. Also there will be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It’ll be awesome! I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.

Ground hog day

Lemme get this straight - XP was getting long in the tooth, so they rushed out Vista, dropping features left, right and center. Now they've decided it's not all that - and decide to rush out it's replacement. Yeah, I can see how this is going to work. Fork out for a hacked down Vista, then "upgrade" to a rushed out 7. Hmmm. Nice way of making money.

Windows 7 and Vista

Vista is what you get when you let the lawyers and accountants manage the business. Let's hope that Windows 7 has better stewardship.

The Wrong Approach

If MS tries to rush the release of Windows Sev7n, chances are they'll give us a buggy, flaw-ridden joke of an OS that makes Vista look like MS's Greatest Success.

What MS should do now is continue to work on Windows Vista and fix what was broken. Windows XP wasn't that hot when it first came out either.

2009 ? Not on your life

And I do agree that it'll most probably be an updated Vista kernel.
It'll really be something to watch MS try to flog another version of the crappiest OS of the XXIst Century - and with a subscription model to boot.
Every day and every news bite I read about MS, I am more and more convinced that Ballmer hates Gates and wants his brainchild to die.
I mean nobody could possibly be stupid enough to think that, hey, Vista was great, let's sell it again via subscription so users have to pay every year for it.
You simply have to hate someone's guts to do that to his legacy, don't you think ?

Oh, and for the two or three Vista lovers out there, know this : there are people who love their Lada as well, but nobody is going to say that Lada makes great cars.
And there are more people with Ladas than there are with Vista.
Deal with it.

Backup

Just to back up the points made by other INQ readers, we keep saying that Microsoft had always planned to release Win7 in late 2009/early 2010. I don't know how many times you have to say it before eventually someone in the media goes 'oh right'..

It's amazing what the media puts out compared to what actually happens within the company.

My two cents...

I would ask to MS if they will include the all-times disgusting DRM infection inside W7 so I can start hating it right away in the same way my stomach gets sick every time I see Vista.

Regards.

Windows 7

Will be the last 32-bit/64-bit release. The following and all subsequent OS releases will be 64-bit only.

Fix the Updates in Vista first!

I'd rather they fix the problem that thousands of us Vista users have with corrupted MS Update systems. Means we cant download or install updates (inc. SP1). MS cant fix the problem as all the solutions they have come up with dont work. They are keeping very quiet on the whole thing. Look up the following - VISTA SP1 80073712 and see what you find. Surprised there hasnt been more coverage really.

Good things to come

Most of you bashers don't seem to look into it before you do so. The 7 kernel is entire rewrite breaking all compatibility with current apps. Legacy applications (including .NET) will run transparently virtualized much like Apple has done.

7 is poised to be the leanest, fastest, more secure, and most advanced OS thus far. Microsoft has changed internally greatly since Longhorn began - code quality forced Longhorn development to be scrapped and an extension of the XP kernal to proceed with security as its main focus.

At this point, they are changing the way they develop their next-gen OS and we should be seeing something entirely atypical of what we've expected the last 10 years.

Nothin new

Someona said windows will have new core, Wrong! Vista was revrittn from scratch, that is why it rocks so much, windows 7 is only new skin for Vista, that actualy what Microsoft said... And by meaning that Vista si last 32 bit OS, well he ment the Vista Core, which will still be the same in windows 7. So realy, don't expect something as new and awsome as Vista in less than 8 years. XP turned slow after a year reseting, and so. Vista can actualy be OEM preinstalled, because it doens't need reintstalling.

Corporate manipulation

There was no need for Vista on the market in the first place, period. The whole thing, including the DX10 vista only feature, smell likes collusion to sell more hardware and in return more software and games. They purely engineered artificial demand, that’s what they did.

Great OS from M$ were Win95 OSR2, Win98 SE and Windows XP SP2. What they do have in common? Maturity. Only after multiple revisions you have something you can call acceptable. What does that mean? Every first released OS by M$ were practically alpha code. You, the customer, were treated as guinea pigs, shelling out big buck for broken products. That’s immoral, but a profitable business practice.

In a perfect world, M$ should stretch XP until 2010 with a patch for DirectX 10, fix Vista mess as much as possible along the way (like they did anyway for all their previous OS) and post-pone the release of any new OS until it actually work 99% OK out of the box. That would take at least 6-7 years. If M$ would have 1 ounce of decency, Windows 7 wouldn’t come out before 2013-2014…

But why is it so big?

Nobody seems to have made the obvious connection between "its big" and "its buggy". Unless MSFT can figure out how to make smaller, more modular, software its just going to pile crap upon crap.

Vista has a problem, its too big and it chews up too much resources. But its not doing anything essentially different from previous versions of Windows -- or any other OS, for that matter.

I'd guess the problem with it is a form of hidden functionality -- its not what it does do, but what it doesn't do that form the core of its new feature set. Trying to retain control of information in a system that you don't have physical control over isn't an easy problem to solve and we consumers seem to be unwitting Beta testers for this technology. Why haven't we asked why we're being asked to pay for this? We don't need it, we don't want it and it doesn't work.

Hobbyists

February 3, 1976

An Open Letter to Hobbyists

To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.

The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.

Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?

Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.

What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.

I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

Bill Gates

General Partner, Micro-Soft

32bit?

The thing that confuses me most about this is why are they doing a a 32bitbit version?

$gb is becoming standard as we speak and this new OS is going to take approx 2 years...

it's pretty much a given that even basic PCs are likely to have 4GB or more at the end of that timeframe.

I hope...

i hope that for the end of 2009 we'll have pcs with at least 4 cores standard and 16gb+ of ram to cope with the vole's next OS...

Why

anyone would want a 32 bit operating system is beyond me. Oh wait, it's all those people with old hardware. Yes. I'm sure they'll appreciate a 100 gig OS that has their computer spend half an hour to turn on, and another half hour to start a web browser. Ever run Vista on, say, a 2.4 ghz p4 with a geforce4 and 256 mb ram? Tip: don't bother.

And why would Win 7 be 100 gig?

Well folks, simple math. The windows folder on my XP machines are between 1 and 2 gb(What's with variation: I don't know). My one Vista machine is now 12 gb. And that's between 6 and 12 times as big. Assuming the next Window will be 6 to 12 times as big as 12 gb you get a range of 72 to 144 gb.

Historically this holds true;

Win98 was a couple hundred meg, win 3 was ten meg, ms-dos was... I don't remember, less than a meg.

So if you extrapolate the statistic I don't see how they can make a new OS that is less than a hundred gig.


Personally, win xp was the last OS the vole made that I will care to use. I'm downgrading my Vista laptop to XP so as to never have to see this malware again. I'm a professional. I work on these machines, I couldn't give a rats a**e about a flashy interface(I turn the "themes" off, so Vista looks exactly the same as XP(which looks like win98 with a better start menu), apart from the Start menu -which now looks like win98 on the Vista laptop(Why?)) or if it can run Crysis on maximum. The Vista laptop has literally twice as fast hardware as my old laptop with XP, yet it runs at half the speed. Do I feel ripped off? Yes. Am I passing the "savings" on to my clients? Unfortunately, yes.

NT 6.5 = Seven.

& they Vondivlad where id' learnedit to writ.
According to Msr. Ballmer, Seven isn't due to stretch in Ball Park till 2010, earliest. Msr. Gates was speaking in South America, So it might be Cut Back Version, more compatible with NT5, if its' 7 being spoken of at all. It was Mary Jo whom started 2009 craze, Pretty Ladies have that Effect.

If you want to email Sir William, go to new website started by Rolling Stones on youtube? or wherever it is, Bills member & so am I. Just click on links.

Remember Most people are NOT talking about NT6, let alone ULTIMATE, when speaking of Vista. Ultie is good, except media Center could use just touch more stability. So give Poor Hardware Manufacturers some Time to get beyond Ultimate & rev it. Home Server or 2008 are good examples of Better Code. If Your in dire Need.
I doubt if 6.5NT would be well served before 2011, as potential release date, it really needs enough Hardware For You Builders to Market before more needless waste.
Alsocoso, SP2 needs be written, thats 2010 deal.
In meantime, Remember:XP is DEAD. It stutters, it sezies. it bumps & Hops, yet its only XP.
Thomas Drashek

Misunderstood

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/14508

The comment has been taken out of context. Windows 7 is still targeted for 2010 for final release and has NOT been moved up at all. Bill was referring to the first beta release of the OS, not a final version.

VISTA FTW!

Honestly i dont see why there should be a new Windows so quick, Vista for me is great and it works like a charm for me, fast, pretty and reliable.

I hate all the "Vista suxs" propaganda. Alot of the people saying that, havent even tried it...or some have really crappy PCs that barely run XP, and they try Vista, of course it will work like crap. Vista is for new gen PCs, upgrade already.