Joe, I think you nailed it. People who have never been involved in Enterprise deployments don't understand the ramifications of major code changes.

Thanks also for the data analysis about Vista licenses. I've been looking for info on Vista penetration as succinct as that. Kudos.

7's primary priority / goal is to put Vista in the rear-view mirror. That's why MS is trying to get it out as soon as possible.

Windows 7 Won't Have Compact "MinWin" Kernel

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/28/0315244

So, no Min-win kernel, no winfs, and really in all likelyhood, only the addition of touchscreen? Touchscreen should be welcomed by Doctors who don't have enough patents all over the world. Think of the hand, arm, shoulder, back and neck problems you will get running touchscreen for eight hours a day.

Windows 7, will be Vi$ta2ME3, with nothing useful added, but will keep the bugs, DRM, and bloat of Vi$ta.

What other reason to release a product like Seven on the public other than to milk them for more money?

If you are a business or user out there, waiting and skipping Vista, this is your best reason to forget skipping Vista, and just abandon Windows entirely. Go to distrowatch.com and download a few linux distros and try them. Other operating systems are BSD and OpenSolaris.

It is time to get off the endless Micro$oft Windows/Office upgrade cycles, which will come a lot sooner now that Steve Ballmer has promised, "to never let that much time pass between new releases of windows." (again)

@chips

Who said Windows 7 would have the MinWin kernel? And if it were going to have the MinWin kernel, how would what Sinofsky said in the CNET article that Slashdot linked to mean they've "removed" it ?

That Slashdot "article" is bull$hit.

So it's really just Vista SP3?

Screamingly obvious here....

This is Microsoft's Windows Vista "Damage Control Edition".

Same operating system, slightly different shade of lipstick, and maybe a little deodorant this time.

Really now, Vista is running pretty well on all my machines, and I prefer it to XP, despite the bloat.

I would call windows 7 the Windows Vista Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista R2. I use Windows Vista Ultimate SP1, I am happy with it, i like i tmore than i like XP, though i think Ultimate is bullshit. Their shouldnt be more than thre SKUs.

Okay, it's still early days and many announcements will probably come at PDC, but what exactly is Win7 going to add to make it "desirable"?

Other than this very-limited-benefit touchscreen support and the standard bug-fixes and tweaks, I've yet to hear anything to move me from XP.

Like a lot of users here, after XP my next Windows platform may well be Linux+WINE...

Quote:
"Whether the designation is deserved or not, Vista is synonymous with Windows Me. Interestingly, Windows Me underwent a partial UI makeover from Windows 95 and 98."

Thats a lie if I ever read one. Windows Me never went through a partial make over, it only utilized a new color palette similar to Windows 2000. It included the Windows 2000 explorer quick links, icons and the Shutdown modal dialog.

In what way is Windows Vista synonymous with Windows ME? I have not heard about any memory leaks, unreliable system restore, buggy HTML Help System reports in Vista. Your views on Vista Joe only relate to utterances on past versions of Windows 9x. Vista is not Windows ME, Vista is based on Microsoft's NT line of operating systems, two completely different platforms being compared. Why do you do this????

Again, Windows 7 will be a major release, but not from a architectural point of view. Windows 7 will be a feature rich release. A lot of the ground work has been accomplished in Windows Vista and the continued innovation will carry over into version Seven as an evolution of the NT kernel. This is good for everyone who invested in Windows Vista and Server 2008.

As for your ideas on modular kernel design. If you believe Microsoft made significant changes in Windows Vista x64 then the same will continue. Microsoft a lot of significant changes with 64 bit releases, in XP Pro x64, Posix and Apple Talk support was removed. With Vista x64 Microsoft moved Kernel Patching to start a clean slate, things like device driver signing. Thats a great sign that Microsoft continually is re-evaluating the kernel and see how it can be improved.

Microsoft is not facing in any financial or human resource issues maintaining two separate architectures and platforms for client PCs and mobile devices. Apple on the other hand does, thats why they had to utilize OS X for the iPhone (more power to them yes). If you believe you want to create embedded devices based on the Windows kernel, there is always Windows XP embedded. But Microsoft offers choices and they are targeting different users and industries and it seems to be working in their favor. Windows Mobile is expected to grab 50 % of the market. So your doom and gloom predictions are pretty much unfounded.

Steve: "People are saying Vista sucks, and aren't buying it".
. .
Bill: "It does suck...more power, more graphics, runs slower, annoys people...yah, it sucks all right. What are YOU going to do about this?"
. .
Steve: "I think that maybe it's just the name. And I noticed that people like playing with Surface (TM). So how about we just slide Surface into Vista and rename it to Windows 7! Do I get a bonus for my genius idea?".
. .
Bill: "...but won't that will just add more complication and slow things down even more? That's it, I'm retiring and I'm going to buy a carpet chain. I've got a feeling I'm going to need something to hide under...".
..
Steve: "Bye Bill. Wow, now I have ABSOLUTE POWER! I'm like SUPER MONKEY BOY! I can make the BIGGEST AND LOUDEST WINDOWS EVER!!!!"(fade to red, as in receivership).

Well *if* Vista is "New Coke" then is 7 "New Vista". Really, I don't get it. I think MS believes that they can force this on everybody through attrition... by killing off XP. True XP is the biggest obstacle to Vista or 7 in a MS product... But, the Desktop linux releases are getting better all the time. MS may be the only company that can possibly break their own monopoly. I wonder if Bill has a "fiddle"?

@Soap:
I think you're right. But can Microsoft get away with charging full price for XP--and then withdrawing XP--in most markets but then dumping it for a very tiny price on the XO laptop in other markets?

I wonder if Ballmer is going to be the latest punchline to the old joke, "I ended up with a small fortune from that deal. Unfortunately, I started with a large fortune."

@ Philosopher:

The XO with XP is a non-profit initiative. Its given to children in developing countries where access to a computers are limited. The economics of charging the full price XP retails for in first world countries would not make sense, so its subsidized. Microsoft does a similar type of marketing with XP and Vista in countries such as China where a legitimate copy retails for $3. The reason for this is to prevent piracy, but also to get people interested in proper buying ethics. In a country where the cost of living is very high it makes good business and marketing sense. Although I hear they are hooked on Windows in the East.

But aren't new versions of closed-source software all about new features? After all, what other reasons to upgrade are there?

So if Dimdows 7 offers even fewer new features than Vista did, won't that make it even less compelling an upgrade?

After all, many have pointed this out: it's not that Vista is a _bad_ piece of software, it's simply that it's not enough of an improvement over XP. That's the primary reason customers are staying away in droves. So what will Dimdows 7 do that is any different? Sounds like it'll be exactly the same situation again.

On the new/revised kernel issue.. Microsoft should use the 64 bit, but only if they can convince mainstream software manufactures to support it. Try running Flash plugin on 64 bit. Adobe does not support it. Many of Abobe's mainstream products don't play well at 64 bits and are not "officially" supported. Even Microsoft's own products fail in 64 bit. (still can't get Project 2007 to run in my 64 bit Ultimate system). As a reseller/var I get real nervous with Vista installs as I'm never sure what's going to fail.

Let's bring on Windows 7 and move forward past the Vista mess.

The difference in attitude between stories is astonishing. I swear two different people are writing for microsoft-watch.com under Joe's name.

How can the same person write the following two statements in one week?

'Vista has gotten a bad rap, deservedly and not'

'By that measure, Vista is a disaster. It's the Titanic hitting the only iceberg within 1,000 kilometers and sinking in five minutes.'

If Microsoft places the Windows XP theme back (XP start menu, XP button bar with up arrow), and does something so in a Vista fresh load, it does not take up 900mb or more of memory with no applications nor AV loaded, then I'm game.

Everyone can now start their MSFT death watch.

MSFT has become so arrogant, they forgot the cardinal rule of marketing:

give the customer what THEY want.
don't tell the customer what they're going to GET.

Fista & Windoze 7 are examples of MSFT arrogance & disdain for what customers (i.e. the people writing the checks) are demanding.

windoze needs to be scrapped & rebuilt in modular fashion from the kernel up.

Joe, I remember when Intel damaged their business by writing an exclusive contract to use only RAMBUS memory, allowing AMD to undercut them on price via DDR-2.

I wonder, maybe Microsoft has a similar time-limited, or SKU-limited, arrangement relative to the CPU-gobbling DRM garbage? If the "feature" is only required in Vista, and future operating systems don't have to have it (i.e. "Server 2008", "Windows 7"), then a lot of the excess resource consumption can be removed.

I don't have Server 2008. Did you see performance improvements which could have been related to dumping DRM?

MSFT needs to remind themselves that this is 2008 and the old days of everyone happily upgrading and blindly spending hundreds of dollars on software are long gone.

Also the competition looks pretty good now and some of that competition has free software just for the taking.

Windows 7 unveiled, has iPhone-, Mac OS-like features

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/05/28/windows.7.unveiled/

Quote; "In terms of interface elements, Windows 7 will allegedly bear even stronger resemblances to Mac OS X, with the presence of a Dock. Microsoft did not extrapolate on how the "dock" functions, but will most likely be revealed in the near future."
----------------------------------------------------
Now I don't know WHY Bill and Steve feel like they have to keep messing with the Windows interface. While I like the Mac "dock" ok, but preferred the interface in XP, 2000, and 98 to it. In fact, one of the most jarring things about Vista, is the way they changed the interface, for no good reason at all. So here they are, stealing (innovating, in their words) from Apple Mac OS X. WHY? Why fix that that is not broken and already worked well. At least the interface was working in XP.

Why alienate users by making them learn a new interface, when the old one is probably better than the new one. WHY? Is it because there is not really going be anything much new in Seven, and therefore the interface changes are needed to trick users into thinking they really got a "new OS"? Instead of the same old tired reworked NT code in every version of NT Windows including Vista.

One of the reasons for staying with the Vi$ta kernel and code, is the DRM commitment that MSFT made with the Hollywood media companies. MS thinks that hardware and cpu speeds will enable Vista/Seven to run at acceptable speeds in time, if they just keep forcing it on people through OEM installs, using the power of their monopoly.

Seven, another train wreck in progess?

They could have done something useful for user with Seven, like actually secure it for internet surfing. Make it secure as Linux or Mac OS X, Bill! Or would that hurt your sales of Onecare? Thats really what it is all about, the allmighty dollar, and the heck with security, UAC which is at best half baked, will not be dumped in Seven for a really good secure system.

The malware problems in windows have been allowed to go on now for too long a time. Its time for the governments of the world and the EU to step in and mandate that MSFT fix its operating systems, or face huge punishments and fines.

Don't judge the product before its release, nobody knows the full feature set. Things changed slighlty between Vista RC and Vista RTM. Sure microsoft need to rethink some things- eg SKU strategy, lets have 7 Server, 7 Server Home, 7 Home, 7 Mobile, 7 Business, 7 Ethusiast(enthusiast gets an every year christmas release) and Windows STARTER. Live (not Windows Live, keep the branding open to other platforms) integration should be a major feature in my personal opinion. I would welcome major tweaks to the start menu and task bar, nothing else, mac os x dock or not. Its like a celebrity magazine tabloid here.

Microsoft boss Bill Gates signals end of the computer mouse

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2047932/Microsoft-boss-Bill-Gates-signals-end-of-the-computer-mouse.html

Quotes from the link; "Some experts have questioned how practical a mouse-less computer would be.

They suggest that typing skills would be abandoned and users would have to lean forward and repeatedly lift their arms to manipulate images on the screen.

"With a PC you'd have to lift your arm every time, and with a screen that's 17 inches wide that's going to become more difficult," said Roberta Cozza, an analyst at Gartner, an IT research company."

Are you people nuts? Do you really believe the garbage you are writing? I mean, really?

I don't even know where to begin. DRM in Vista? You daffy goof. You do realize that Vista supports a protected path, right? That means is "CAN" support the playback of high definition content that is protected. No other OS can do this. The time the processes related to this check runs is when such content is played. At all other times the process does not run.

Security. Vista is the most secure operating system in use today. Its security model is roles and policy based and far more granular than the read, write, execute rubbish still hanging in *nix and OS X. Secure-able objects, the UIPI, Protected Mode in IE 7 and a native firewall that supports dynamic switching between personas.. e.g., private, public and domain.

Vista already has a native x64 bit client and that client allows 3 bit apps and games to run perfectly well, using Windows on Windows, or WoW.
Try it. It works wonderfully.

About resource usage... Vista makes terrific use of available RAM. Where a system has it, Vista will use it. It manages that RAM extremely well and these days, 60 bucks for 4 GB of RAM may be had at multiple locations online. RAM is no longer an issue.

The things you guys are writing make little sense they simply are not supported by any science, or fact.

Finally, any idea that MS/Vista copied OS X and Apple is outrageous. MS held a PDC in November 2003, years before OS X Tiger shipped. At that PDC MS revealed all that Apple later half-baked into Tiger and later Leopard. OS X only recently added rudimentary tagging where Vista has had it since PDC 2003 through its RTM. I don't know how you guys come up with the things you do. It's like you are 12 years old or something.

Those who fondly believe that Vista's DRM really does stay out of your way when you're not using it, might like to read this:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1861

chips : wrote

One of the reasons for staying with the Vi$ta kernel and code, is the DRM commitment that MSFT made with the Hollywood media companies.

---------------------------------------------------

This is the reason why Vista checks itself 60 times a second, and no doubt Windows 7 will do the same. DRM is the reason for the high hardware requirements and the numerous incompatibilities with existing and older peripherals such as printers and of course why vista runs slow and buggy.

While XP does allow DRM'ed material to be played and viewed. XP does not spy on its users 60 times a second like Vista does.

And the way MSFT is so hell bent on ramming Vista down the public's throats to the point of practically naming XP as public enemy # 1 is pathetic. Some in the open source community are having a field day with that alone.

This is a classic sign that a company is in trouble, when their leading and very successful product (XP) is causing "problems" for their new "offering". So stop selling the very successful product....and sell that buggy bloated one instead...yea that will bring in the profits....

It is bad enough that they have to cook the books to make Vista look like its selling. Are they now counting site licenses and subscriptions as Vista licenses? So if you want XP for your company, you get downgrade rights to XP, but only after buying a Vista license.

What is outrageous is that one buys a new computer with Vista and then "has to" upgrade the Ram just to try to make it perform "properly". What a joke!

Now be careful, not only do you need to spend extra to make it work better...but you might invoke the wrath of the WGA as it happened to some who innocently upgraded the ram or added a new video card.

Or how about having to hack the crap out of the damned OS to make it have almost reasonable performance and almost "normal" start up and shutdown times like I had to do to a relatives new laptop. Hacks like Disable Superfetch, System restore, Aero, Windows Defender, Norton, Symantec, side bar, and disable most start up programs to make it perform almost as fast as my relatives XP desktop.

Funny, the same below average people who have no issues with buying more ram (after buying a new computer) or having to hack it.

Are the same people who criticize Linux because they might have to configure their wireless connection on that OS despite its free for the taking and contains absolutely no DRM and the (60 times per second) "trusted computing" unlike Vista.

So the fine people in Redmond are scared of open source and Linux, so please tell me how come the fine folks in Redmond don't design a OS that has the same hardware requirements as say Ubuntu..which requires only about 165 MB Ram? (at desktop with nothing really running)

If open source scares MSFT so much enough to bring XP Home back from the grave for the teeny laptop market, then why doesn't MSFT DESIGN a NEW OS that can run on those laptops? What? XP Home will be extended to 2015 on the teeny PC/laptop market?

(No, please don't spit your coffee out...that LCD screen costs money...lol)

Because MSFT made a deal with Hollywood to not only play DRM-ed product but to also DRM the entire OS too? And from what was published so far, Windows 7 is slated to suffer the same fate as Vista.

And the result? You the consumer suffers because of these back room deals with the industry. Is it any wonder that Apple has taken off by leaps and bounds since Vista was released? Any wonder why entire school systems and even entire cities have begun to drop Windows like a hot potato?. Don't take my word for it Google it.

Its not just the DRM, its the bloat, the hardware requirements and more importantly the overpriced product, extra client access licenses and restrictive EULA's that has agencies, companies, governments and even the New York Stock Exchange moving over to Linux and bailing out of MSFT.

I can't imagine anyone wanting to be in Ballmer's shoes as he tries to explain to stockholders and investors why he pissed away Windows XP for $16 per (with that $10 "discount") to the teeny laptop market while discontinuing the popular and best selling Windows XP and XP Pro (that sells for $99 to $299) and leaving the public with a heavily discounted Vista that no one wants. In my opinion has to be one of the dumbest and costliest business decisions ever made.

Maybe Gates and Hollywood still supports Ballmer, but will the stockholders and investors?

Ralph says, " This is the reason why Vista checks itself 60 times a second, and no doubt Windows 7 will do the same. DRM is the reason for the high hardware requirements and the numerous incompatibilities with existing and older peripherals such as printers and of course why vista runs slow and buggy."

Yep, no only does it check the drives 60 times a second, but it also checks the Vista system, and the Drivers 60 times a second, to make sure things have not been (hacked) changed. Is it any wonder, that so many things can and do go wrong with Vista? Is it any wonder, so many programs that worked fine with XP will not work, or work correctly, in Vista?

It's time to look back and start asking questions, don't you think, Joe?

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/4E2A8848-5738-45B1-A659-AD7473899D7D.html
Microsoft's distraction hand was waving a hand of five Aces, but rather than questioning how that could even be possible, the press just gushed about how great Microsoft's future looked. The company's bluffing was actually empowered by the uncritical appraisal of the press, which only encouraged Microsoft to continue in announcing unrealistic plans.

(more at URL)
--------

What part did you and your colleagues play in facilitating Microsoft's efforts to crush competition and derail innovation since the 90's, Joe?

What part are you missing? What questions are you not asking? What suspicions are you burying for the sake of access to those who will continue to bull$#!@ you because they know you'll print their answers?

Windows had so many amazing qualities attributed to it over the past years but, now, Windows 7 is suddenly a meek, mild, little nothing of an operating system... why?

Because the whole world is watching. Do we need a "Microsoft Watcher" when the socialized web can come up with more believable conclusions than the Scobles and the Cringelys and the Wilcoxs of the world?

@portuno, very interesting read. I believe our friend Andre Da Costa subconsciously supports that position when he writes "If you believe Microsoft made significant changes in Windows Vista x64 then the same will continue."

Which can be translated to common talk as: "If you believed the vaporware hype from Redmond then you're gullible enough to keep believing it well into he future.".

It is sad indeed that people promote this system. Which in the end harms Microsoft the most. While true constructive criticism is labeled as bashing and ignored.

@Gerald,

don't encourage the pump & dump scammer portuno. he's the "genius" that held a company's stock from $11 down to 1.5 cents. A company teetering on the edge of BK & a company that's been reduced to patent trolling.

Ignore portuno & he'll go away.

@Al, while portuno and Iman might be well known for the stock issue and persistent posting of VCSY or whatever it is they hold stock in, this post clearly raises a point. A very interesting and important point. Why didn't we see this coming? Why didn't the analysts see this coming? Why did the ones who did see this get brushed aside by the more rosy "official" press?

@Gerald,
Anyone who's remotely interested in SW architecture, knows what MSFT's big problem is:
they cling to their legacy OS, and continue to bolt more & more gak to the rusting, underpowered chassis.

MSFT is afraid to take the step of Apple (which admittedly is easier to do when your marketshare is in the single digits), & tell your customers: "we're changing things to make them better, BUT all your old programs may not work"

windows won't get better until the entire thing gets demolished & someone with their head out of a cramped stinky place makes some tough decisions. Al doesn't buy this "everything is moving to the web". That scenario may be fine for mom's email & dad's pr0no collection; but in heavily regulated, audited, & controlled industries (financial, medical, etc.), to have customer information outside the control of a company's IT structure is tantamount to saying "sue us into oblivion".

@Al, I totally agree with you. More so I'd add that Microsoft missed the opportunity to fix this matter by means of virtualization. It could easily do today what Apple did with OS 9. Have a fresh new start while keeping backward compatibility.

Unfortunately they did not do so and we know well why not. Microsoft does not take any type of chances and thus is unable to innovate. Microsoft could very well release its own version of Linux with proprietary tools and extensions. We need only look at RedHat and Suse to see how this is indeed possible (closed source over open source). But nobody in Microsoft is willing to risk it. They're to busy protecting their corporate a$$e$ to wanna take any move "out of the ordinary". Thus they end up like deer looking at incoming Web 2.0 headlights.

As a sidenote, I also agree with you that the "everything is moving to the web" statement is false. Just about everything is getting "interconnected" through the web, but it need not be on someone's server to be a web 2.0 app. Of course this is all irrelevant because it is the speed at which things are changing (not where they are being stored) that is killing Microsoft. A three year period to the release of Windows 7 is the equivalent of geological period in today's Internet time frames. It seems like we are living the end of the Jurassic and these folks want to wait till the end of the Cretaceous to release yet another dino-OS. Good luck to them.

@ Gerardo;

I would have greater respect for the seething unwashed mass of business/consumer IT "experts" if they were able to think and express themselves on par with your abilities.

Somebody should listen to you, but I doubt they will. They're usually too busy trying to find an answer to the points you make in the little toy boxes they label "experience".

I want windows 7 operating system

tritium, I'm just curious. How long have you worked for Microsoft?

8 MORE things about Windows 7.
1)It's not gonna be what they say. Vista/Longhorn wasn't. Me wasn't. Microsoft hasn't really done anything "revolutionary" since something like 1995.

2)They will copycat whatever Linux and Mac innovations are out at that time.

3)The Vista stench will still linger.

4)Windows Server 2008 in workstation mode is a better successor to XP then Vista is. Faster on the same hardware. But they're doing a Windows 2000 on it (Came out almost same time as ME). Charging WAAAAY too much.

5)Windows Midori? Geez, can we finish getting Vista right first?

6)Won't be using Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards and Jason Alexader to sell it.

7)Windows 7 will still have the legacy of a million viruses/malware. Sorry, backwards compatibility isn't always a good thing.

8)Will introduce a service pack within a year which will screw up everyone's stability and ease of use.

9)Will finally get it nearly right and then six months later drop support for it. Yeah, that's 9 not 8...