Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 16 September 2008 18:29
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
With Windows 7 built upon the strong foundation of Windows Vista SP1
and Windows Server 2008, the rumours that Windows 7 could come months
earlier than expected sound like good news to me, with the upcoming PDC
promising a new beta!
Windows 7 is well known as the upcoming successor to Windows Vista, Microsoft’s current operating system that had a troubled birth, but has undergone somewhat of an ugly duckling to swan transformation over the past 18 months.
Of course, not everyone is enamoured with Vista, especially Linux purists and Mac OS Xers who still regard it as Microsoft’s biggest blunder.
But many of those who actually use Vista on a day-to-day basis and have used Windows as their primary operating system over several years would be likely to agree with me that, especially with SP1, Vista is Microsoft’s best OS yet.
Reports online, such as
this one from Internetnews.com now bring forth the news that Microsoft will be presenting the first public Windows 7 beta at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) from October 27 to 30, and releasing it on the first day.
Computer manufacturers are already testing earlier beta versions, showing Microsoft’s desire to get the OEM community on board at an early stage – far earlier than it did for Vista, whose 5 year development cycle (which included a complete restart at one stage) is infamous.
Windows 7 will see more of the Office 2007 “ribbon bar” appear in its interface, while also supporting “multi-touch” technologies the iPhone has made famous, as long as you have a desktop LCD screen or notebook screen that can handle touch input from more than one finger.
But as Windows 7 is an update to Vista, it’s not a complete re-write, and in some ways emulates the product cycle that Apple has taken with Mac OS X, an OS that is generally (but not always) updated on an approximate 18 month timeframe.
Microsoft last had such a similar-ish timeframe back in the Windows 95 days, followed by Windows 98, then 98 second edition, then Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000 and then Windows XP.
Continued on page 2... please read on!
