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Microsoft Submits Windows 7 for Antitrust Review
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has submitted the follow-up to Windows Vista to the committee that oversees its US antitrust compliance, to ensure the operating system is meeting the terms of the company's agreement with the government. According to last week's status report on the US antitrust case, Microsoft "recently supplied" the Technical Committee (TC) with a build of the OS, code-named Windows 7, and the TC will "conduct middleware-related tests on future builds" of the software. The move was revealed in papers filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Those on the TC so far are the only ones privy to what the follow-up to Vista will look like, and Microsoft is mum on details of the software. But recent company moves and revelations hint at what can be expected from the software, which is due for release in late 2009 or early 2010. Lets hope Microsoft learns some lessons from the "Vista Capable" dilemma!!"
didn't we just have an article nearly exactly like this a few days ago?
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Apparently they don't send it to Academy members...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The problem with saying hardware is 'vista capable' is that its not entirely clear what they mean. I have it on good authority that a room-full of MS lawyers have come up with a new term for selling hardware that the newest version of Windows may or may not run on:
"Supports windows 7" means that if you put the software box on top of the hardware, the hardware will not physically crumble to the ground.
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http://vancouvercondo.info
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I didn't think anything could hold together in the pure evil emanating from Windows CDs...
Windows XP was released Q4 2001,
Windows Vista was released Q1 2007,
Windows 7 is scheduled for Q4 2009,
Windows 8 is scheduled for Q1 2011,
Windows 9 is scheduled for Q4 2011,
Windows 10 is scheduled for Q1 2012.
Windows 11 and 12 are scheduled for Q2 2012,
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
A big part of antitrust is windows overrides default browsers and such, and forces it's own bundled applications on the user by making it difficult to discover how to make your software run well on the OS when it's not clearly documented (secret hooks only available to MS).
If windows media player is able to achieve better performance through some type of black magic that other media players don't have access to, how will this be tested on a pre-release secret platform? Same with browsers, office suites, or any other MS application.
Have these copies been distributed with the complete source code so secrets can be uncovered? Even if that was the case, who would pay for the man hours to sift through millions of lines of code? Even with a full source code audit, the released binaries could be completely different anyhow.
I think the only solution to restore fair competition is massive fines that go directly to marketing and development of competing platforms. Paying consumers who have been locked into the MS trap still leaves them trapped.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
From the business pages of the Wall Street Journal, it appears that many countries in the EU are ditching Microsoft and going with Linux.
So one wonders if this will all become moot at some point, as the invisible hand of the marketplace chooses a wiser solution.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I would love to have a copy of Windows 7.
So, back when Windows had lame numbered version numbers (Win95, NT 4.0) it had jazzy codenames like Chicago, Cairo and whatnot. Now, that the official releases have jazzy official names (Vista, XP, whatnot) codenames have turned into... WINDOWS 7? so what gives?
So that's it? All that to-do about Vista and how it's the Next Big Thing and it's slated to be replaced by "Windows 7" inside of a year and some change from now? That'll mean that Windows Vista was in production longer than it will be in service.
So now the US government is reduced to doing testing and QA for Microsoft!
What exactly does this discussion have to do with the "Vista Capable" debacle?
Sure, Vista is a slow, bloated operating system that offers very few tangible improvements over its predecessor.
However, the "Vista Capable" debacle grew out of the fact that Microsoft's marketing droids decided to vastly overstate Vista's ability to run over slow hardware.
Had Microsoft been a bit more conservative with their estimates (subtly admitting that their operating system is a cow), there never would have been a legal issue. Vista on its own isn't a great product, although its faults do not constitute a breach of the law (had the product been absurdly unstable or insecure, that might have been the case, although by most accounts, Vista either holds the line or improves over XP in these regards).
TFA discusses the possible engineering & design decisions that are being put into Windows 7 as new features. Odds are that many of these features haven't even been coded. Likewise, given that the design document has *just* been finalized, I can't imagine that the marketing guys have had much (if any) time to figure out how to spin the new product.
Here's a hint: Look at the features that were dropped from Vista (some of them were actually quite innovative).
Personally, I hope that Windows 7 is a decent, solid operating system, and corrects for Vista's faults. Microsoft has had a tendency to appropriately compensate if one of their products flops. NT4 spawned into a beautiful desktop-ready os with the release of Win2k, and after destroying all evidence that Windows Me! ever existed, Microsoft launched XP, which is arguably the most successful desktop operating system to date.
Also, Apple needs a kick in the pants. They're getting complacent, and the Quality Control on the last few releases of OS X have been abysmal by their former standards.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I also have good feelings about Windows 7. Vista had really good features but failed in lot of ways for me. I really feel that Microsoft recognizes Vista's faults, listened to the real critics of it and this will show as such in the new version.
This is not a sarcastic statement.
~ Ron Fitzgerald
For as much Windows and Microsoft bashing that goes on in this community, it sure is funny to see how eager people are to get their hands on their latest beta.
"Microsoft Beta" is a double negative, but I wouldn't count on the end result being positive...
it's obvious that Skynet won't start from a chess AI, it'll start when Microsoft adds just one too many features to Office and Visual Studio, and they become self-aware.
No, no Skynet risk from Office or Visual Studio.
If they every become self-aware they will surely commit suicide.
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