Multi-touch is a natural for Sinofsky who likes his fingers in everything. Not a nice man to work for.

Not impressed. I guess the excitement and nostalgia for Touch technology has been taken away by Surface. But, I just don't see how this will replace my proven experience with the mouse, keyboard and or laptop touch pad. How will this increase a users productivity, ad value and agility to my work flow. All I'm seeing here is a frenzied response to the iPhone and possible me first before Apple comes to market with something more revolutionary and in fact Apple will always come with something better. If this is the direction Microsoft is taking I see it as another small niche like the Tablet is right now.

Don't get me wrong, its still early days yet and we are no where near the first beta for Windows 7 which is most likely to come next year. The Windows 7 build we saw tonight is more Alpha code which is still in the early milestone stages of development. Code freeze for Windows 7 will most likely happen with Milestone 3 expected at PDC 2008 in October. There Microsoft will release a Public Developer preview of Windows 7 to IHVs, ISVs, they will start testing their devices and apps on it. You can't have milestone betas and developer previews at the same time, it would be feedback overload Joe. Microsoft is doing this in logical steps like they always do.

You are wrong about the 2009 date, Steven Sinofsky said in the interview GA for Windows 7 will be 3 years from the GA of Vista which puts it around January or February 2010.

Quote:
"Or, executives are living in 150-million-licenses-shipped glow, believing that Vista is doing well despite the large number of licenses downgraded to Windows XP."

Then why can't you give an exact figure for how many Vista licenses have been downgraded to XP?

Another case of follow the bouncing ball.

MPX is moving main line in the Linux distrobutions.

This is a little different. provides the tech required to support multi touch but also provides the tech so you can using many keyboards and mice to the one user. Note each keyboard and mouse could be controlling a different application.

So far nothing the big saving feature MS needs more like just more coping.

If I was CNet I'd be really ticked off. They got played by Microsoft PR. Sinofsky sets them up with the bad cop routine, no info before its time. CNet and others rightfully call MS on it. Then the good cops comes out and throws the shiniest piece of 7 to the crowds. What a show! how can any journalist think they are not being played when dealing with MS.

If Seven is based on Vista and there will be no major architectural changes, then they've failed to address the Number One problem with Vista:

Vista is bloated and runs like molasses, even on newer hardware. My Dell Dimension 9200 with Quad-Core processor and 3GB of RAM feels *slower* than my 5-year-old Athlon box with 512MB running WinXP!!! This is outrageous!

Never mind the UI. Sure, it has problems (such as UAC) but they must focus on the Number One problem: performance.

Joe, there are clear and public indications that W7 will ship in 2010, not 2009. It's also wishful thinking to hope Microsoft has disowned Vista. If that were the case, they would not be basing the future on Vista code, both with consumers and their server OS.

I agree that Vista has its issues, especially code bloat and the uptick on hardware requirements. But we have a poor sense of history when similar complaints were made about WinXP versus Win2k. Hey, I made them. As a developer and more of a purist, I will always opt for performance over sheen. But in the end, hardware got cheaper and faster, and eventually XP's requirements were no longer a big deal.

My XP boxes will work just fine for the next five years or so as is. But all my new systems run Vista, and they run without any major issues. It's clear that for the vast majority of people on the planet that use Vista, it works very well, no matter how much bad press the pundits give it.

Vista is the future, like it or not. We all need to get a grip in the real world.

I don't know how good were the multitouch features presented in the D conference, but Leopard already has some of those features. Remember the Mac Book Air? Apple already got there first...

Have you tried Windows Server 2008 as a desktop system? The difference in performance compared to Vista is just mind blowing. Remember, the code base is the same as Vista, so what has changed?

This 2009 vs 2010 discrepancy seems to be vexing a lot of people. Which is right? Probably both. I suspect you will see a Q4 2009 RTM followed by a much longer gap before general availability. Vista showed that OEMs were not ready to deal a short gap, especially if it was anywhere near the holiday season.

Where's the beef?

So much of this is warmed over gruel.

Gestures? This is innovation? Hello, Apple has loads of patents on this. Will MSFT start its copiers again?

Sticking a finger on a computer screen. Okay at a restaurant to compute a bill but everyday? The fools at MSFT have not figured it out yet that there is a range of applicability to gestures. On a computer, it probably does not work, in general but don't tell the Bloatfarmers that. Like Zune, Xbox, Vista, Spot and PlaysForSure, they will have to learn the hard way.

The Bloatfarmers could not innovate themselves out of an open paper bag and the share price reflects the lack of top management capability. MSFT has been a net value destruction proposition over the last five years.

Ballmer should be kicked out.

Notice that they didn't demo running in a web browser. Most applications (all except MS ones?) are browser based. How does this benefit browser users? How is this based on W3C standards? The demos are all cute hand crafted Windows desktop applications, but are they going to be able to get anyone to write any of these now adays. Will this fail the same way developer uptake of Avalon has failed? Seems like to succeed it will require a huge amount of windows specific application devleopment that I don't think will happen again.

Businesses users will avoid this junk.
Home users will return this junk too, just like they did the Eee PC with Linux.
-
How can I write my programs when I can't see the screen past my fat fingers?
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Do they want computers to be more like Nintendo Wii?
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Still I'm not complaining. The more time & money they waste on Aero / DRM / touch junk, the more time *nix and MAC can catch up. For M$ sake, I hope they drop the touch "feature".

Touch?
Does anyone want fingerprints on their 30 inch LCD?

how about the bloat issue? any word from Softie about that? Vista is slower than a corpse in mud, what's softie done to address THAT fact?

What I am gathering form all this is that MSFT is focusing once again on high hardware requirements. I really hope Microsoft does make Windows 7 high hardware. Then leave the small laptop/tiny PC, OLPC, lower end computers market all to Linux.

If MSFT retires XP Home for 2010 tiny PC/OLPC markets like it plans to. Then it seems that whole market is Linux'. Unless XP Home is extended till 2015 or somehow, someway, they hack Vista/7 to work in these smaller laptops.

Is MSFT willing to ignore the tiny laptop/OLPC segment of the market in order to bury XP for good (like they are so hell bent on doing)? (Joe, that would be a excellent suggestion for a blog here, just by itself).

There are some in the Linux community who see this as two ways. Some Linux users don't want XP to go away, other Linux users want XP to go away so that MSFT users will look for alternatives and come over to the Linux camp like they have been doing more and more since the release of Vista.

If anyone thinks that Linux has no future, lol take a look at the Windows forums where posters are asking about dual boot and wanting to know more about Linux. The Vista forums have some pretty good posts about dual booting with Linux. There is even a Linux section in the Vista forums. So much for loyalty to MSFT, people are ready to jump off the Titanic, others have already and will continue.

Are desktops and OS' becoming irrelevant? If you bought a generic mp3 player for say $29 and it does its job playing MP3's. Does it really matter what firmware version is in that player? Does anyone even care what system is powering that player?

If your computer lets you play your tunes, burn CDs and DVDs, watch DVDs, transfer to your MP3 player, watch YouTube, watch and listen to streaming internet,email,instant messaging,print, and do word type documents.

Unless you do some serious gaming, then does it really matter if you use Windows or not? If you can do all this and for faster performance with less ram and for the cost of $0 , and install it on as many computers as you want.... then go for it. Google the Ubuntu forums and start there. Freedom from the Redmond upgrade merry-go-round machine is a few clicks away.

Does touch screen have a big future? Yes maybe video terminals like gambling casinos and small hand held devices where it is already been implemented for quite awhile, maybe on a oven or refrigerator as part as a embedded home app. But for the mainstream home computer use, I can't see the demand for it.

Re: Ralph (above)
Maybe that's what M$ is doing with their money:
Trying to make my oven and refrigerator more secure.

ZzarkLinux :wrote

Re: Ralph (above)
Maybe that's what M$ is doing with their money:
Trying to make my oven and refrigerator more secure.
----------------------------------------------------

Yes and I could just see it now...a MSFT embedded fridge.....

Wife
"Honey, the refrigerator is not working"
--------------------------------------------

Husband

" Oh dear, we just failed Windows Genuine Advantage"
----------------------------------------------

Wife

"It was working yesterday, it just took forever to cool"

-------------------------------------------------
Husband

"I added more ram so the refrigerator would cool faster but I guessed it tripped the WGA"

------------------------------------------------
Wife

"My potato salad is ruined!"

Ralph, I think has this thing nailed with his comment; "Does touch screen have a big future? Yes maybe video terminals like gambling casinos and small hand held devices where it is already been implemented for quite awhile...."

Most people will not want the fingerprints or the resulting pressure point damage on their lcd's. Therefore, I suspect, that mostly touch screen will only be useful on CRT displays. And that is not where the future is.

So why the focus with Microsoft on touch screen for Windows Seven? Is Microsoft so desperate for new ideas, that this is the best they could come up with? Clearly, Seven will basically be Vista SP2, with a little more polish perhaps. So Bill and Steve need a selling point to hide all the old Vista defects in Windows Seven, therefore Touch Screen.

Those of you that have read my comments before, know that I predict a Windows Seven release in 2009, probably late late spring or summer. Get used to the idea, thats it easier to release a service pack or minor release (that what Seven is) with stripped out components to make it appear to run faster. Windows Seven will not need the major testing that Vista did, and didn't really get. Because, it will be, Vista SP2 will new wallpaper, and maybe, with any luck, it could, run better? But don't count on it.

Let the Windows upgrade treadmill upgrade cycle begin again. Problems with the new Windows Seven? Just throw money at it, just like a lot of you folks did with Vi$ta. Then again, this is a good time to download free linux at distrowatch.com and start getting the Microsoft Monkey(boy) off your back. You don't need to feed the Borg anymore, they don't deserve your hard earned money for the crap they are serving now. Windows Seven, same warmed over code, new wallpaper.

Well, touch screens do have their applications. I've seen iPhones used by others who rave about its interface.

I use a Garmin Nuvi with a touch screen interface that makes it much easier to use than their aviation counterparts as far as navigating and selecting (all other things being equal, which they aren't, but still...). Some devices are clunkier with off-screen buttons than they are with a well-designed touch interface. But typing this post on a touch screen instead of a keyboard???? No way!!!!

I also use Ubuntu 8.04 LTS with the restricted Nvidia drivers and many of the Compiz (formerly Beryl) effects enabled. And use it as my only work computer for development AND for office communications (documentation, email, calendar, and so on).

(Side note: upgrading from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 was a breeze, and it runs just as fast or faster, uses about the same amount of memory with increased function, and I did NOT have to invest any money at all in new hardware. So why does the Windows world blindly accept that new software must be bigger, slower, and require upgraded hardware just to do the same jobs???)

Considering the job that the Compiz Fusion development community has done, I imagine that Microsoft is going to have to bribe or otherwise strong-arm the touch screen hardware folks to keep the specs out of the hands of the open source community. Because if Compiz Fusion is any indication, the open source counterpart of Microsoft Touch will be as good or better, and won't require extra gobs of memory or money to run well.

And the superiority of any particular user interface hardware, be it keyboard, mouse, track ball, pressure pad, touch screen, voice, joystick, rudder pedal, brake pedal, or what-have-you will be determined by the specific device and its specific application, and not by some marketing guru's pipe dream.

And Vista, with its Aero interface, has taken some of its ideas from others, and given others ideas of their own for improving upon it. So Microsoft now takes the touch screen ideas of others, adds their own twists, and inspires others to take it even further.

It's nice to see the Linux-based open source community benefit from the ideas of others. Too long has Microsoft (and others too, they're just the most successful pirates, but not the only ones) taken from others and locked up their improvements, stopping innovation on anyone's terms but their own. Around the time I had grown to like MS Word 2.0 and was awaiting fixes for some critical bugs, I heard a quote from Bill Gates that openly declared that Microsoft doesn't fix bugs... and found that every step forward in Word (2.0a, 20.b, 20.c, 6.0) resulting in several steps backward in other areas. I jumped back into LaTex and despaired of the junk word processors out of Lotus and Microsoft... until OOo 2.1 came out, that is.

Now the Redmond Monopoly has competition in function, cost, AND quality. The open source community fixes bugs (mostly, although I gave up on Evolution but maybe it's mostly because of MS Exchange issues???), especially on the heavy hitters (such as OOo, Firefox, Thunderbird, kOrganizer, X windows, Gnome, KDE, and so on).

Competition's a b*tch, ain't it, Billy and Stevie? Now you finally know what it feels like.

Philosopher : Wrote

Competition's a b*tch, ain't it, Billy and Stevie? Now you finally know what it feels like.
----------------------------------------------------

Especially when the competition offers the software for free, no company...not even MSFT can compete with that without sustaining a loss. The Linux community does not have to answer to stockholders or investors like MSFT have to.

I would not want to be in Ballmer's shoes when he has to address the stockholders and investors. And attempts to explain why he "had" to heavily discount Windows XP Home to as low as $16 to the tiny laptop/PC market while discontinuing it on the Retail level where it sold very successfully for $99 and up. Yes some smart business decision....

MSFT decided it had to release XP Home to the OLPC and the tiny PC market for $16 to $32 each just in hopes of keeping Linux from dominating that market.

This despite MSFT announcing that XP was all but dead in 2007, of course...then Linux entered the arena then the landscape changed.

So would someone tell me again that Linux isn't ready for primetime or desktop or a threat to Windows?

MSFT thinks otherwise just based on their response to Linux entering the tiny laptop/OLPC arena.

Mac isn't MSFT's main competitor, its Linux.

Chips is right about the touch screens for Casinos and such. Already without the need for Windows 7 Touch features, the world is already doing "Touch" for systems that need and benifit from it. So WTF does the average home PC need "Touch" for?

I run a dual 30" monitor configuration to design artwork, CAD, and other development stuff -- I certainly do not want to "Touch" my screens in anyway shape or form.

People -- "Touch" is anything but new, and is already out there in the real world without the need of MS reinventing it!

Here is something I will expect from MS when Windows 7 comes out:

Windows 7 "Capable" Requirements
Dual Core Processor (quad recommended)
2 GB memory (4 GB recommened)
256 MB video card (1 GB recommended)
160GB Free disk space (260 GB recommended)

Please correct your statement about multi-touch. It appeared on the iPhone first to be recognized as a very useful feature and part of a GUI, NOT "Apple is there,too, with the iPhone".

If the iPhone did not popularize the multi-touch, Microsoft would not even be thinking about it, it is a shame, they are tooting their horn as if they invented it!

Microsoft should and have to hire creative, intuitive and forward looking, individualistic software designers who could create new ways and methods and be in the forefront of software development, not just steal from others and follow everybody else.

A touchscreen UI is appropriate for some devices and some companies are able to pull it off and make it work well. From what I've seen of the surface and W7 demos at MSFT, there is an unacceptable latency in MSFT's implementation and it reminds me of their smartphone fiasco ten years ago. The Redmond R&D geniuses sent their phone OS to HPaq for testing and the engineers were shocked when even simple functions showed 300 to 1000 msec latency because the code simply wasn't up to the task of dealing with real time I/O. Rather than fix the problem, MSFT told the HP engineers that they didn't know what they were doing and it was all a problem in the hardware! IIRC, Ballmer fired a program manager, the whole project was scrapped, and $400M+ in smartphone hardware was bulldozed into a landfill.

So here we are many years later and MSFT is up to its old tricks. Cobbled, half-assed code that tries to mimic the work of other competent players, presented to compliant journalists who parrot the claims as though a real product exists somewhere.

Janice put the finger on the problem. And, for a lady, it may be an improper gesture, but it's definitely warranted and well applied here.

Microsoft showed a UI implementation to a bunch of journalists and claimed that's Windows 7. If that's Windows 7, Microsoft's future is in greater trouble than anyone outside the inner circle in Redmond realizes.

I hope, Windows 7 will release soon. It looks wonderful

Lol, Not many people like Vista and I suppose Microsoft realized this. However, instead of bringing a new OC so soon they shouldn've tried to fix as many issuues with Vista as they can.
I don't see myself touching my screen or even bringing my hands up to the screen for "flicks" too much work. I use laser mouse and I barely move it to move from one end of the screen to another.
Sure, people that like useless stuff like I-phones will upgrade for the "eyecandy",but just like with i-phones, they'll soon realize that it's crap.