Windows 7 coming in 2009 or 2010? Ask Bill Gates

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 06 April 2008 13:04

Opinion and Analysis

I wish Microsoft would get their story straight on Windows 7, the successor to ‘the wow starts now’ of Windows Vista. Why? Because the company says 2010, while Bill Gates – still the official man at the top, says it’s coming ‘in the next year or so’. Which is it?!

Windows Vista, an operating system I use every day and vastly prefer to Windows XP, was the OS that was meant to truly wow us all. Now.

It actually wowed me quite a lot, despite initial driver issues, and, truth be told, as I've said many times in the past, I love Vista. Well, the RTM version at least. 

Sadly, most of the rest of the universe didn’t quite have the same experience I did with Vista, with most people experiencing much more ‘ow’ than wow.

Vista SP1 is still in disarray – while many can actually download it, and have, reporting good results, my own computer still refuses to acknowledge the existence of SP1 due to the fact I’m lumbered with at least two of the handful of drivers that can send SP1 into a spin.

Indeed, so bad has the Vista publicity been lately, that Microsoft – or at least, Bill Gates – must have been wondering how to heal the Vista blister.

SP1 was meant to be the band-aid and kiss from Mommy to make everything better, but until I can personally download SP1 through Windows Update and experience the supposed goodness it brings for myself, SP1 is still a red-raw sore that just won’t heal.

So, what does the solution appear to be, from the mouth of Bill Gates himself? Release Windows 7 early!

Given that Vista is actually quite a good OS in many (but not all ways), and has benefitted from an extra year of fixes and updates, why not just continue polishing Windows Vista up, like Microsoft did from Windows 95 to 98, and release a ‘new’, yet fully Vista compatible (in at least the driver sense) version?

After all, Windows Server 2008 in ‘desktop/workstation mode’, as opposed to server mode, is said by many out there to be a much better version of Vista than Vista itself. So, why not just release Vista II – or Windows 7 - by the end of the year, in time for the Christmas/holiday season, and work on the real Windows 8 for 2010?

Unfortunately, this is a relatively easy path that Microsoft is unlikely to take, even though Windows Server 2008 is effectively that updated version now, with Bill Gates promising all kinds of new features that, experience suggests, will get cut as the Windows 7 deadline draws ever closer.

So, what has Bill Gates said to create all this lovely new confusion? Please read onto page 2.