Posted on 07/21/2007 12:50:40 PM PDT by HAL9000
Excerpt -
Microsoft is planning to ship its next major version of Windows--known internally as version "7"--within roughly three years, CNET News.com has learned.The company discussed Windows 7 on Thursday at a conference for its field sales force in Orlando, Fla., according to sources close to the company.
While the company provided few details, Windows 7, the next client version of the operating system, will be among the steps taken by Microsoft to establish a more predictable release schedule, according to sources. The company plans a more "iterative" process of information disclosure to business customers and partners, sources said.
Windows Vista, the oft-delayed most recent release of Windows, shipped to businesses in November and to consumers in January after more than five years of development. Vista's gestation period was marked by shifting product details as internal priorities changed and problems arose with development.
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(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
Whee, three years until new problems, and still no service pack release date scheduled for Vista.
Call it “Not on my Computer.”
I have 1 Vista box, a laptop, and am considering buying another with XP Pro. Now that I know Vista’s deathdate has been set at 3 years I can safely say that I’ll go with the XP Pro and skip Vista altogether.
Need to get a couple new laptops; the old ones are just about worn through (and become media centers...) I was thinking, damn, I’m going to be stuck with Vista, then Dell decided to start offering XP Pro again.
Two laptops on order, no Vista. Of course, Microsoft will stop supporting XP when 7’s released.
Vista may well become the latter day equivalent of Windows ME, the operating system that followed SE98 and that no one wanted because of its bugs.
That’s fine with me. Vista can go the way of ME for all I care. Let’s just hope that Windows 7 isn’t worse.
Win7 ("Vienna") is probably (finally!) a new codebase, not the NT codebase.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_%22Vienna%22
WinME was intentionally crippled and buggy, so that it would kill off the old DOS--based Windows line (3.1/95/98/ME) in favor of the NT line (NT4/2000/XP/Vista).
Windows 5 (what became Windows 2000) was arguably the best Windows version Microsoft has ever produced. 5.1 became XP; but 6 (Vista) was originally intended to be a rewrite of the NT codebase -- but that effort failed, necessitating the release of Vista as half-baked crap.
So if Microsoft has any brains at all (and they do), Win7 will be a rewrite from scratch, and it'll be decent. Maybe even (finally!) have the long-awaited WinFS.
Regardless, it will be something quite a bit better than Vista.
I’ll take $10 against this version shipping before 3 years.
Heck, in three years, they’ll just be getting the lemmings rolling in on Vista in a major way.
We've been hearing that song for a long time haven't we?
Maybe even (finally!) have the long-awaited WinFS.
If they could get over the NIH crap, they could go with ZFS, and everyone would benefit greatly.
“7 of 9”?
If you had the right drivers, ME was actually quite stable.
Zippo on the security part, though.
Surely you jest.
I've personally built over 700 PCs, starting with MS-DOS 5.0 with Windows 3.1, back in the 486 days. I have yet to meet a single stable Me installation. If I ever see even one good installation in person, I'll believe that it wasn't pure MS crap.
As it is, I refuse to support Me. I'll support any other MS operating system back to MS-DOS 3.3. But if a customer calls me for help with an Me machine, I evaluate it for the necessary hardware capabilities to run XP--which some can, just barely--and that's the only answer I give: "Upgrade to XP (if possible) or get another machine."
Yeah, I admit it was generally pretty stable - when the box was powered off. But if you turned it on, it was a crap-shoot. And if you were foolish enough to run any non-trivial applications, forget it. I know of not a single stable ME system, out of perhaps 50 I've come in contact with professionally.
I had a native ME system as my desktop at work (in 2001) and it nearly destroyed me, both technically and temperamentally. Worst piece of shiite I've ever worked with - blue screens, lost data, glitches left and right. The same identical box ran perfectly stably for over 5 years after I wiped ME and installed a real operating system - Win2000.
If you had good luck with an ME system, good for you. I won't call you a liar, but I'll say with complete assurance that your experience was the rare exception.
Like TChris - I refuse to work on ME boxes. Upgrade it to 2000 or XP, or downgrade to 98/SE, but ME was the devil's own work.
I wonder how many times during installation the install wizard will ask, “Do you really want to install Windows 7?”
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