More Indications Windows 7 Is Coming In 2009

An anonymous reader writes "Following on the news that Microsoft was going straight to a RC for Windows 7, the One Microsoft Way blog has put together some dates on the upcoming roadmap for Vista's successor. Microsoft has always said 'three years after the general availability of Windows Vista,' which was released on January 30, 2007, and that the release date was also dependent on quality. Internally though, Microsoft is saying other things. It looks like we'll see the RC coming in April, and a final RTM version before October 3. Yes, that means Redmond is currently hoping to get Windows 7 out the door in 2009."

Comments

Problems in Vista still unresolved in Windows 7

[jkrise]

The Protected Video Path has introduced several problems with pre-existing software that deals with video and works perfectly with XP but fails in Vista. I operate in the healthcare segment, and GE's medical records software still does not possess Vista support. PACS viewers from major companies like VEPRO and E-Film still do not support Vista.

Given that three are no architectural changes in Windows 7; these problems will remain with Windows 7 and corporates looking to use pre-existing application software will stick with XP as long as they can.

http://www.merge.com/na/efilmlanding.htm

Curious

[ShakaUVM]

I'm curious why all these people who hated Vista are showering love on Windows 7. Is it some sort of mass psychology type thing?

I'm a UNIX guy, and I don't consider myself a Microsoft hater per se, the visual changes in Windows 7 just look hideous. I try and keep my screen as clean as possible to cut down on the distractions (meaning my windows machine looks about the same now as it did in 1995), and by this benchmark, Windows 7 is even worse than Vista with all its worthless gizmos and gadgets and stuff like that.

Is it really so hard to understand that I don't want shit moving around on my screen when I'm trying to think? Or that I don't want to see icons for anything except stuff I'm actually working on? The new Windows 7 taskbar looks -- crap, I already used "hideous" -- uh, distracting.

Combine with all sorts of stupid decisions in Vista like to replace the up-arrow button with a refresh button that does nothing in all common cases, and, yeah... I'm mystified why people are so positive about Win7,

Re:Curious

[gzipped_tar]

It's natural that people would lower their expectations after the dissatisfaction of Vista. Once the expectations are lowered, they are in turn easier to satisfy. Especially when most of the customers have few other choices.

Yes I know they do have choices. But MS now is still a monopoly.

Re:Drivers

[Tony Hoyle]

No it wasn't, it was the fact the release was barely beta quality (corrupting files during copy, UAC going nutso and not letting you do simple things, etc.), it hit the hard drive almost constantly, took 3 times as long as XP to start apps even when fed 4GB of RAM.

Drivers just wasn't the issue.

Windows $NEXT_VERSION will floor all comers

[David Gerard]

Guest post by Mary-Jo Enderle

I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION build $MOCKUP.

I tried it on a low-end netbook with four Core 2 Duo chips and only 8 gig of memory, and trust me: $NEXT_VERSION is shaping up to be one heck of a product.

WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their "distros" full of all sorts of useless shovelware like "FireFox" and "OpenOffice" and, haha, "GIMP"! - the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved $HATED user interface from Office $HATED_VERSION is now part of WordPad and Paint!

The controversial Digital Rights Management system in Vista has been worked over, with user-downloadable "tilt bits," which you can configure to your own liking. It'll require every user to supply a blood sample for DNA analysis, and the beta nearly took my finger off, but of course that's only if you want to play premium content. The Blu-Ray(tm) of Battlefield Earth was unbelievable on this operating system.

A release candidate should be available by the end of this year. There's just no way that Steve "Trains Run On Time" Ballmer will miss the Christmas deadline. The final release should leave the midnight queues on Vista release day - the street riots, the water cannons, the rubber bullets - in the shade.

I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they're finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.

Also, there'll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It'll be awesome!

I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.

Re:Drivers

[gEvil (beta)]

Windows 7 uses the same driver model as Vista. So as long as companies have released Vista drivers (which many finally have over the past few years), then the hardware will work fine with Windows 7.

Re:Don't focus on money! (OT)

[Penguinisto]

Nope - as a former prof myself, I can tell you that the little college campus I worked at paid Microsoft $1500 per year for the privilege of MSDNAA covering approximately 150-200 students. They kept perfect accounting for it as well, and if the numbers went up, your yearly fees went up.

Meanwhile I was handing out copies of RedHat, Mandrake, Gentoo, and SuSE as fast as my CD burner could spit them out. RedHat themselves sent me a stack of pre-burned CDs when the Linux classes first began in early 2000, and they practically evaporated. The cool part was, I didn't have to give a damn if you were using them for academics or not, and I usually (and gently) extracted a promise that you would share it with someone else if you had a burner at home.

/P

Re:Surprise to Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

but browsing the net and sending emails just isn't that demanding.

not a firefox user eh?