Windows 7 to be a leaner, meaner and cleaner Winix?

By Stan Beer
Monday, 22 October 2007 17:30

Opinion and Analysis

Since Microsoft released Windows 95, the company's biggest money spinner has been going downhill faster than a granny strapped to roller blades on the slopes of Sydney or San Francisco. The software giant has now promised than in 2010 we will see a much leaner Windows. Does that mean in 2015 we can expect to see the first Winix OS?

It does not matter whether we're discussing Win 98, ME, 2000, XP or fat Vista, Windows these days is slower, lumbering and more bloated than a glutton with an all you can eat voucher at a fast food mall.

What's more Microsoft's pride and joy is unsafe. You practically need to have your Windows computer innoculated with penicillin to dare to go online. 
Every month, Microsoft releases a dozen or more software fixes to plug newly discovered vulnerabilities that could allow remote attackers to take over your system.

An entire multi-billion industry has sprung up over the past decade devoted entirely to protecting the sorry asses of us poor dopes who have allowed ourselves to be conned into believing the next release of Windows will fix everything. And yet we continue to pay and pay believing that some day Microsoft will get it right.

Now we hear from one of the most senior software engineers at Microsoft, Eric Traut, a man with the title of "distinguished engineer". This is the sort  of title you only get in a big IT company.

In a discussion last week, Mr Traut admitted to the failings of Windows. He admitted to the bloat and he unveiled Microsoft's vision for the future - a new much leaner core for Windows?

And here I was thinking that the core of Windows was built around that lean, no frills operating system called MS DOS (or PC DOS if you live in IBM land).

Anyway the new "MinWin"core is just 25 MB compared to the Vista core of 4GB (now that's a big core). The word is that MinWin, Mini Windows Me or whatever it's called is actually going to be a hypervisor virtualization layer for the next Windows operating system - or something like that.

The question is: why is Microsoft bothering with all this? The company already has all these customers hooked onto its lines. Why not just give them a decent product next time by using a Unix (or Linux) derivative as the core? At least they'll know it works.

Microsoft could still package up its fancy logos and integrate its propietary applications without trying to reinvent an inferior broken wheel. Perhaps it's time for Microsoft to take a lead from Apple. Perhaps it's time for Winix.