Windows 7 Trades Email and Photo Apps For Downloadable Ones

arcticstoat writes "Microsoft has said that it plans to remove a lot of the standard apps from Windows 7 in order to make the new OS 'cleaner.' Among the apps for the chop are Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker, which will no longer be included with the operating system as standard. Instead, equivalent versions of the apps will be available from Microsoft's Windows Live download service as optional free downloads, much like the new BETA versions of the apps that Windows Live offers today." Meanwhile, jammag writes that "tech pundit Mike Elgan posits that the rushed-to-market Windows 7 — due in 2010, now being beta released this October — may in fact merely be Vista with new packaging.

Comments

Re:Windows 7

[lgw]

it's Vista Service Pack 2.

It's true, you know (though it will probably be Vista SP3, as they'll need to roll a new desktop GUI). Microsoft has recognized that the corporate customer base didn't warm to Vista and is "waiting for Windows 7". No dummy, Microsoft will release *something* branded "Windows 7" ASAP.

Of course, this may blow up big time if the fundamental issues with Vista aren't resolved. Since one fundamentel issue seems to be "it doesn't add anything important over XP", MS may be in trouble here. Big companies skip one release of Windows all the time, but MS really doesn't companies to stop and ask "wait a minute, why do we do these upgrades again?".