Windows watch starts to point to 7
Officially, Microsoft has very little to say about Windows 7.
But since nature abhors a vacuum, and tech enthusiasts like them even less, the rumor mills are starting to crank into high gear.
Postings in the last week suggest that Windows 7 may arrive in 2009, not 2010, as had become the conventional wisdom. Meanwhile, a poster at enthusiast site Neowin, claims to have played with an early development build of the software.
I've long been skeptical of the notion that Microsoft would wait until 2010 to try to update Vista. It just doesn't fit well with CEO Steve Ballmer's promise that Microsoft would speed up Windows releases.
Plus, Vista has gotten only a modest reception from reviewers and other critics. And while Microsoft is bringing out a service pack update this year, the company has said it will contain virtually no new features. As such, it is unlikely to boost consumer enthusiasm.
That said, Windows 7 won't necessarily be a major architectural overhaul. If I were Microsoft, I'd spend nearly all my time fixing Vista annoyances and adding features that don't touch the core of Windows, particularly in areas that consumers really care about, such as photos, music, video, and Web browsing.
I'd make connecting to digital photo frames and flat-screen TVs a snap. And I'd make multi-touch a standard option. (It sounds like that's already happening.)
Apple has really created the playbook on how to have just enough in an operating system release to make it interesting without making it a project that takes several years to complete.
But my wants aside, the real question is what is on Redmond's to-do list for Windows 7. A blogger purporting to be on the Windows 7 team has made several postings on the new OS.
Among the revelations: at least one feature on Microsoft's list is something that made its debut in Leopard. (The blogger notes that the feature was on Microsoft's road map prior to Apple's announcement that it was part of Leopard.) He or she wouldn't say which feature it is, but said it is in this list of 300 Leopard changes.
Microsoft folks have said a few things here and there about Windows 7. Last fall, distinguished engineer Eric Traut gave a university lecture in which he talked about a slimmed-down Windows core, dubbed MinWin, that was part of the Windows 7 development process.
So what's on your want list for Windows 7? Drop me a note or post your thoughts below.
Make the code smaller than Windows XP.
Have opt in subscription cards like Warcraft.
Use the cards when needed.
Built in network diagnosis.
Use TCP-IP from XP SP1 and not SP2.
Yes stop messing with fundamental communication protocols!
XP games should be playable under Windows 7
Windows 7 should only support the newer advanced BIOS. I am tired of booting taking several minutes.
Uninstalling programs will not leave ghostly remains of removed program.
Windows 7 should incorporate latest version diskeeper (windows XP only had native version 3.)
Self defense(file protection should be enhanced)
Again no uninstaller program should be allowed in any temp folder or system or system32 folder! Keep that under local settings.
Make Windows 7 even more friendlier for skinning/theme modification. Free theme updates from windows update!
In short, a secure OS that stays out of your way.
That being said. . . .
-If MS wants to do anything they should outright ditch this activation bullcrap. I had such a time getting Vista transferred from my MacBook Pro to my new Tablet PC that it wasn't even funny. I ended up calling them up and spending 5 minutes explaining what I wanted to do. I shouldn't need to do this damn it!
- I really wish MS would either ditch the registry or compartmentalize it to the extent that I can drag an app to a backup drive and in the event of needed to do a system restore I can drag it back. The anti-Mac fans can ***** out OS X all they want, this is the single greatest feature about OS X. Backing up the apps directory and the library folder and then restoring them gets you back to a working system in minutes instead of hours on Windows. Sure you can drop bank on Norton Ghost or other similar apps but that costs money. At the end of the day this really starts to add up after a while.
- I wish MS would get USB support implemented in a fashion that doesn?t blow like a cat 5 hurricane. The lag between having a system, typically a laptop, come back from sleep and having devices that are USB implemented detected by the OS can be anywhere from annoying to outright unbearable. If anything this should be MS?s biggest focus on Windows 7.
-Oh and keep Windows from being allowed to pop above or below the task bar. My tablet PC has its taskbar on the top of the screen instead of the bottom. Windows routinely pop under the bar so I can?t grab them, move them or close them. Annoying is an understatement.
I see little in Vista that recommends it. It am a 60-something professional who spend most of his day doing Internet search, e-mailing and using oductivity software, so all the Vista goodies are irrelevant to me. To me it is a resource hog that M$FT needed more than its customers did.
I want an OS that starts up instantly, does not require a firewall, anti-virus software, blah, blah blah and four gazillion bytes of apps I'll never use (I'll humor M$FT - put the bloat on a user disk, like many Office add ons, so the user can install it/them when they are needed. Better yet, make it accessible online.), and that shuts down in less time than an elephant's pregnancy.
My next purchase will be a Mac so I can escape Redmond's bloat.
Macs don't need to be defragged.
Why can't M$FT design a self-defragger or do something that obviates the need for another piece of bloatware? Or do they need to conserve cash so badly that they have to save their 20 year old DOS core?
An upgrade where the machine I bought the day before 7's release isn't obsolete would be nice.
Stick to one version, two at most. Instead of Home, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate, how about Working, Working Pro.
Pick a naming format for heaven's sake. Is it going to be Windows 7 or are we going the way of the George Strait concert tour and have the Budweiser Presents Microsoft Windows Powered by IBM, Sponsored by General Motors, and Distributed by NBC Universal?
Pay more attention to what the consumer's want instead of what your programmers think would be 'neat' and 'spiffy'. I haven't used the Aeroglass interface yet.
Stop trying to re-invent the wheel with every 'upgrade'. Work new features in over time, instead of all at once. No wonder it takes so long between releases.
And now, for what everyone on here would wish for... me to shut up...LOL
* an architecture that doesn't buckle under the weight of its feature-set. Bite the bullet and modify BSD UNIX to your needs if you can't do it on your own. It worked very well for Apple, after all.
* a user security model that looks less like a slathering of duct tape, and more like a real security model. Go study the *nix security model and concepts like AppArmor if you need an example or two.
* a browser that doesn't look, taste, and smell like some cheap imitation of Firefox.
* an OS that actually uses open standards like OpenGL and Java, without the half-baked, overloaded and proprietary alternatives such as DirectX and .NET.
* No DRM, please.
* make at least a half-arsed attempt to get rid of the cruft if you're not going to build it from scratch.
* deeper access and less opacity for the local admin guy and the programmers. If I want Ring0, I should get Ring0, or at least a real explanation as to why not.
* an OS config rig that doesn't rely on a crap single-file (and corruptible) "Registry" setup.
* a fully-documented API
* A chance to add or remove any deep-level system function or feature I want (see also Linux and "make config").
* document macro handling that isn't so broken that one can wreck the machine with it.
* Fully (not half-arsed) user-customizable UI modification for the desktop. For examples, see GNOME, KDE, and to make something for us high-end efficiency types, "Fluxbox"...
* the built-in ability to use open and industry-wide popular standards like NFS, SSH/SCP, stunnel, and etc.
* The ability to format a large new disk in something that isn't NTFS. While we're at it, an actual journaling filesystem would be nice - something like ext3 or Reiser.
* IPSEC ruleset configuration that doesn't suck (for once).
That should be sufficient for now. Do all that and it might be attractive.
/P
Also, Office 2007 was built for people with little (if any) memory. Rather than having various menus, there are visual options which are time comsuming wastes.
MicroSoft is attempting to entertain children vs. produce a decent "commercial use" product.
The last good OS out of Redmond.
Sell it to a company that isn't bent on being the police force for all computers.
NT 5.0 was the last professional Microsoft OS and technically the best built OS.
(though NT 4.0 was more stable and secure the addition of NTFS 5, "active directory" (aka Microsoft crippled LDAP), and fast workstation graphics was worth the trade-off)
NT 5.1 aka XP added a firewall, (because they'd rather do that than fix the holes) DRM (because all computer users are criminals), nonsensical blocks to NT 5.0 installs, a media player that takes over the whole OS, themes, three steps to do the same tasks that took one in 5.0, and a whole lotta crap that breaks without adding *anything* to the core of the OS.
Go back to making an OS that just runs programs.
Remember?
It'll be a lot harder to break.
Let other software companies pollute it with themes, playlists, bad browsers, customization to cripple it for the mentally retarded (aka increased security), etc.
XP sucks,
Vista is so bad that Apple tripled its market share.
Bodes well for "7" now doesn't it?
LINUX is the future unless Microsoft goes back to having a professional OS and a completely different OS for the mentally impaired masses.
force Microsoft to innovate. Vista was a mediocre release at best.
They need to optimize what they have if they plan to upgrade Vista.
There is absolutely no reason that it is such a resource hog.
COMPLETELY REWRITE WINDOWS!
I am a Microsoft fan and I still dream of this, when Windows will be completely scraped as it is now and a new OS will be written from the ground up. This means new architecture, new kernel, and new technology baked right inside, not sitting on top of an aging architecture.
updates to OS X on average about every 18 months (with a
longer wait for Leopard and then an even longer delay because
of the iPhone.
Microsoft would do well to show the new features at least six
months ahead and build up some excitement from users so that
when they release Windows 7 it's as big a success as Leopard
was when it was released. 20 percent of the installed base of OS
X is already Leopard. What percentage is Vista?
- Uh-oh!
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by jpsalvesen
January 23, 2008 1:03 AM PST
- What lack of clue!
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Reply to this comment
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See all 77 Comments >>Microsoft is perfectly free to do what Apple is doing:
Use open-source software, and contribute any patches made back to the project as required by the license. OSX ships with Apache, as in example.
Microsoft is just not .. uhm .. result-oriented and humble to do the same as Apple does.