Will Windows 7 be heaven, or Vista’s twisted sister? Answer in 2010

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 16 March 2008 18:07

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft will, as usual, take plenty of time to get Vista’s successor out the door, with confirmation that Windows 7 will launch in 2010. The big question then, is when in 2010?

Tech news site Softpedia claims to have received official notification from Microsoft that Windows 7 will launch 3 years after the consumer launch of Vista, meaning a 2010 launch, and not 2009.

The third quarter of 2009 would actually a much better timeframe for Microsoft to get its next version of Windows out the door, so that Microsoft and its hardware partners can sell shiny new computers pre-loaded with Windows 7, but this doesn’t look like happening.

This is surprising, given the complete stuff-up Microsoft made with Windows Vista in the first place, completely missing the 2006 end-of-year Christmas/holiday shopping season, resorting instead to the ‘Windows Vista Capable’ stickers that ended up being applied to computers that were Vista Incapable – unless, of course, you were actually happy running Windows Vista Home Basic.

Early releases of Windows 7 that have had screenshots posted to the Internet show an operating system that looks very much like Vista itself, but given that we’re still over two and a half years away from Windows 7’s release, this is no great surprise.

Softpedia notes that Windows 7 has already reached something called ‘Milestone 1’, with ‘Milestone 2’ due for April or May.

But these are really just early builds and are obviously far from Beta or Release Candidate status, with a first true beta probably not due until sometime in 2009, although that’s only my own personal guess.

In confirming a 2010 release date for Windows 7, Softpedia reprinted part of an email they received from Microsoft which advised that: "We are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA [General Availability which was Jan 30, 2007]. The specific release date will be determined once the company meets its quality bar for release”.

Still, despite a lot of media attention for Windows 7, the vast majority of Windows users are still waiting for Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3... Continued on page 2.