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As many people have noted, Windows 7 is a lot like Windows Vista. But by adding multitouch abilities, Microsoft is hoping to create an operating system that, quite literally, feels different from Vista.
And, when you do get to put your hands on Windows 7, it certainly is a much different experience than Windows Vista. For those who missed it, here's a video of the touch features in action, taken at the PDC.
But PCs that use that multitouch technology are bound to cost more than their traditional counterparts. And I'm just not sure how many people will actually fork over extra cash for that experience. Personally, I like touch. I'd probably pay more for a laptop or desktop that had touch-screen controls.
But I might be in the minority here. Apple users seem to crave innovations, even those that come at a price. Windows users, meanwhile, tend to have a different cost-benefit calculus, one that makes it hard for pricey extras to reach the necessary volume where they are no longer pricey.
With Vista, for example, Microsoft was touting the notion of a secondary display, a feature known as SideShow, that could offer a quick look at upcoming calendar appointments without having to open up a laptop. I know of only a couple instances of SideShow actually being used. The biggest factor I heard was the cost.
The question is, will touch be any different?
I talked about this and some of the other challenges and opportunities for Windows 7 as part of a Daily Debrief video. What do you think? Take our poll or sound off below in TalkBack. And click here for our photo gallery of Windows 7's multitouch features.
LOS ANGELES--One of the biggest problems with Windows Vista had nothing to do with the software Microsoft shipped.
Microsoft's Jon DeVaan speaks about Windows 7 as the company kicks off its WinHEC 2008 conference in Los Angeles
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)It was all of the things Microsoft didn't ship. In the years leading up to Vista's release in November 2006, Microsoft changed course several times, leading to wasted time and energy for hardware and software makers that had made bets on features or timing that later were changed.
In a speech to hardware makers attending the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), Microsoft's Jon DeVaan said that the company is aiming to rebuild trust that Microsoft will deliver products with the promised features and at the promised time.
And Microsoft is also hoping that most partners won't have a lot of work to get ready for Windows 7. "We have the tenet that if something works in Vista it really should work in Windows 7," said DeVaan, senior vice president of Microsoft's Windows core operating system division.
The company is hoping to improve some things from Vista, particularly start-up times as well as performance when managing a lot of open windows.
Battery life is another area where Microsoft hopes software improvements will make a meaningful difference. The company said that in some cases it is getting up to an extra hour of DVD playback and at a minimum, the same PC should get 20 more minutes of time in 7 than the same system would get in Vista.
That's the difference between a cliffhanger and getting to finish your movie, one of the Microsoft workers said during a demo onstage.
Some of the developers spent their time cruising the booths, while others sat on bean bag chairs and watched CNN and MSNBC on plasma TVs.
WinHEC attendees watch CNN as Ohio goes for Obama.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)I'll leave the election predictions to others, but here's some key early returns from WinHEC.
Windows 7 logo program: After using multiple programs for Vista, including a Vista capable program as well as basic and premium logos, Microsoft will have just one logo for Windows 7 and no 'Windows 7 capable program."
The feedback was loud and clear after Vista--just one program. Microsoft, in fact, faces a class-action lawsuit over its Vista capable program.
Vista Velocity: That's the name given to a program in which Microsoft has helped PC makers create and test their Vista machine to meet a series of performance metrics. Still fuzzy is just how Microsoft and the PC makers plan to market the machines that passed such testing. I hear there won't be a logo on the machines, but there may be some sort of designation at retail.
Device Stage: Microsoft and partners were showing a number of devices that pop up special "Device Stage" screens when connected to Windows 7, including printers from HP and Canon, cameras from Nikon and phones from Sony Ericsson and Nokia.
LOS ANGELES--Attendees at this year's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) will get at least one thing that folks at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference didn't get--a laptop bag.
WinH'EC attendees check what's inside their conference bag. Hint: It's not a hard drive.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)There were some grumbles last week about the cheap nylon bag that served as the conference bag. But, then, those at the PDC also walked away with a portable hard drive packed with code. WinHEC folks are only getting DVDs, I'm told.
The conference is expected to largely reiterate the Windows 7 news from last week, albeit with a bigger hardware focus.
The show floor doesn't open up for a little bit yet, with a giant projector set to display MSNBC so folks won't have to forgo election results to get in their networking time. In the meantime, a crowd has gathered around a kiosk displaying a host of laptops running Windows 7, including several Netbooks.
The keynote speeches start Wednesday morning, with Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan talking Windows 7, while Bill Laing is set to talk Thursday about the next server release, built on the Windows 7 code, but to be called Windows Server 2008 R2.
Click here for more news on Windows 7.
Early arrivals at WinHEC check out an assortment of Windows 7 laptops, including several Netbooks.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)
LOS ANGELES--The differences between Vista and Windows 7 are subtle--sometimes so subtle that they can go unnoticed.
This point was exacerbated by the fact that the build that developers were given a chance to take home last week doesn't have the new taskbar that represents the most visual difference between Windows 7 and today's Vista desktop.
Microsoft went to the trouble of shifting all the computer kiosks at the Professional Developers Conference over to Windows 7 on Tuesday. But because the version lacked some of the key visual features, some attendees didn't even notice they were running the newer Windows.
But Microsoft felt that keeping the user interface features out of the developer build was critical to keeping the features a surprise at the conference. The company's earlier M1, M2, and M3 builds all leaked out, said Chaitanya Sareen, a program manager in the Windows unit.
As the conference was winding down on Thursday, Sareen and another program manager--Rebecca Deutsch--offered an in-depth look at the changes Microsoft made to the desktop as well as the rationale for them. To get the best understanding of the changes, check out the two embedded videos (apologies for the lack of tripod).
The new taskbar is, in many ways, more akin to Mac OS X's dock than it is to what most Windows users have seen at the bottom of their screens for years.
With Vista and all its recent predecessors, there are a host of different icons at the bottom of the screen, with one group representing favorite items, another representing open program windows and a third representing notifications and items that launch at start-up.
Window 7 aims to do away with most of that redundancy in favor of one collection of large icons that live at the bottom of the screen. The icons represent applications chosen by the user and live there whether an application is running or not.
The large icons serve several purposes. The icon can, of course, be used simply to switch to or launch an application. It is also home to what is known as a "jumplist," sort of like a mini start menu for each program that can contain a series of actions, a link to recent documents, or even a series of controls that let a user take an action without switching to the program itself.
"This is the one button to rule them all," Sareen said. A left click opens the windows while a right click or the swipe of a finger on a touch-sensitive machine brings up the jumplist.
When a program is open, the icon also allows a user to preview that application's open windows. Clicking on a thumbnail naturally brings that window to the front. Hovering over the preview, though, temporarily previews that window as if it were in front, but doesn't actually complete the change--a feature Microsoft is calling "Aero Peek."
The idea came as the company tried to solve a riddle: what was the perfect size for a thumbnail window? For things like graphical Web pages or a pair of photos, a small representation might do the trick. But when one is trying to, say, flip between two similar Word documents or e-mails, it gets harder.
"The perfect size of the thumbnail is the actual size of the window," Sareen said. And that's how Aero Peek was born.
The goal with that feature and others, Sareen said, is to find ways to remove some of the things that make computing harder, what he calls "paper cuts." They aren't bugs, so much as things that are needlessly complicated or nonintuitive.
"We kind of went on a war against paper cuts," he said.
The company is also trying to reduce all of those annoying notifications that pop up along the right hand side of the computer. Developers can still write code that makes them appear, Deutsch said, but with each one that pops up, users have the option of disabling all such warnings from that program. The idea is to use social engineering to convince developers to bother the user far less often.
LOS ANGELES--While it was Windows Azure that got much of the attention, Microsoft also released another important platform at this week's Professional Developers Conference.
Microsoft's Live Framework is essentially the developer piece of Live Mesh. It's what lets developers use the mesh technology to add online components to their desktop applications, or conversely, to give online applications an offline component.
The software maker had said that this would be coming when it unveiled Live Mesh this spring, but its actual launch was somewhat overshadowed by the discussion of Windows Azure on Monday. The Live Framework is itself built on top of Windows Azure, but exists one layer up from the core operating system, using Microsoft's prebuilt layers for things like contact management and other services.
As with Azure, the Live Framework is at an early stage. Microsoft at this point is mainly hoping that developers start experimenting with the tools, as opposed to building broadscale programs.
'"It's not ready for shipping a production app," Corporate Vice President David Treadwell said in an interview this week.
Microsoft did show several concept applications at the PDC, including efforts from Blockbuster and BBC, which showed a version of its iPlayer that used Mesh to help people see what programs their friends were watching.
As for which Microsoft applications will be mesh-enabled, Microsoft has not said a ton. Treadwell did say that Windows Live Wave 4, the release after this fall's update, will feature components of the mesh technology.
"We're working on integrating with the next major release of Windows Live," he said.
Neither Treadwell nor Windows Live general manager Brian Hall would give many more details, though when I suggested a mesh-ified version of Windows Live Photo Gallery might be in the works, Treadwell said "That's the class of thing that we're pondering."
Live Mesh, meanwhile, is shifting this week from a technology preview to a full-fledged beta, adding native support for Macs and Windows Mobile phones, among other new features.
Microsoft is also opening up the identity component for the Live Framework, meaning developers won't necessarily have to use Microsoft's Live ID to take advantage of other mesh components. Microsoft got a fair bit of attention at the show for its cooperation with Live ID, but it also said it will allow businesses to handle their own credentials, using Active Directory.
"The Microsoft Services Connector lets businesses take advantage of Live services, while letting the business use its active directory to handle authentication," Treadwell said.
Provided businesses can make sure only employees have access, Treadwell said, many are deciding it's OK for the data to live outside the firewall. "People are opening up to that."
Some businesses at the PDC also expressed interest in perhaps having their own storage piece used as well--something Microsoft will have to sort out for Live Framework.
LOS ANGELES--Microsoft's Hailstorm prompted an avalanche of criticism when it was proposed seven years ago, but developers seem to have few qualms with Windows Azure, which embraces many of the same notions.
With Windows Azure, Microsoft not only controls the operating system but also the data centers where the applications run and the servers where the information is stored. If anything, Microsoft's control has grown, not shrunk, from the vision that the company outlined in 2001.
So why the lack of uproar this time?
Timing is a huge factor. For one thing, Microsoft's image has changed dramatically from the one it had when Hailstorm was introduced.
"It was the evil empire against Java and open source," independent analyst Peter O'Kelly said. Even Microsoft's code name was off-putting.
"When you think Hailstorm, you think destroy my garden, not helping me," O'Kelly said.
A slide from Microsoft's introduction of Azure Monday at its Professional Developers Conference.
(Credit: Robert Vamosi/CNET News)The industry has also changed dramatically. Companies have gotten a lot more comfortable with the notion that corporate information can live outside a business' own data center.
"Salesforce.com is the big one that broke through that glass ceiling," O'Kelly said.
Microsoft corporate VP David Treadwell doesn't dispute the notion that there are elements of today's strategy that can be traced back to Hailstorm.
"You are implying correctly that Hailstorm was kind of before its time," he said in an interview.
Microsoft has also learned from its experiences, Treadwell said.
With Hailstorm, Microsoft insisted on owning the relationship with the customers. Now, the company is talking about the notion of federated identity and cooperating with OpenID.
And, while Microsoft is big, it is no longer the only behemoth.
Much of Google's vision is downright audacious relative to what Microsoft proposed with Hailstorm, O'Kelly said. "Fundamentally, their mission is very clear. It is to organize all of the world's information. You are part of the world's information."
Security and trust
Also, while the data may live in Microsoft's data centers with Windows Azure, it can also be encrypted and other measures can be taken to make sure that it stays proprietary.
Azure gives companies the ability to tightly control the security of the data, said Jordan Ellington, vice president of legal technology at global firm Transperfect. Companies can encrypt the data at the server and send it encrypted over Microsoft's network and unencrypt it at the client.
"We wouldn't let Microsoft actually host our data. We're just using them as plumbing," Ellington said. Whereas, "small companies are not threatened by the intellectual property issues because it's a cheap service."
"I don't see, for quite some time, large corporations putting all their information in the cloud; it's too attractive of a target," he said.
But businesses now have to evaluate not just the theory of whether allowing others to hold their data is a good thing. The reality is that, in many cases, large third parties may be able to do more to protect a company's data than some mid-size firms can do on their own.
"Organizations have come to say, 'let's compare it to practical alternatives as opposed to some Utopian ideal," O'Kelly said.
Ray Ozzie
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)Plus, Windows Azure is still at the community preview stage, so businesses will have time to kick the tires before it's even ready to host their mission-critical applications.
"It's no different from paying any other hosting company," said Troy Farrell, solutions architect for Operitel Corp., which provides software management services for e-learning. "I guess some people genuinely distrust Microsoft because of their size, like some people distrust Google, which is hosting and storing data in Google Apps and other services," he said.
Trust is indeed an issue with cloud computing, Ray Ozzie told CNET News earlier this week. But Microsoft believes that trust may help them in this area, particularly when it comes to competing with Google.
"Cloud computing is ultimately going to be, do you trust this provider to have more to lose than I have to lose as a company if they mess me up?" Ozzie said in an interview. Ozzie said Microsoft is well-positioned to garner that trust, both because of the scale of its investment and because it is putting its money where its mouth is--building its own Azure-based applications.
Still, Ozzie said he'd expect businesses to move in waves, first moving infrastructure type things and only later moving business applications.
Even those who don't really trust Microsoft have options.
"Microsoft never has to see anything you are doing," said Alberto Ramirez, a developer at consultancy Tallan. Information "can be encrypted on both ends. They're just passing it along."
Microsoft may also benefit from the constraints of a tighter economy.
"There is demand for this, especially now," Ramirez said. "IT departments are scaling back. This requires no IT staff and no server in a room. And the security is taken care of."
CNET News' Elinor Mills contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES--You may not know it, but you are carrying 100 watts of power inside you.
The problem is, much to the lament of all those whose cell phones and iPods run out of battery juice, researchers haven't found a very good way to harness that energy.
In an interview with CNET News, Microsoft research chief Rick Rashid said the best that researchers have come up with is to put solar panels on a hat or perhaps harness some power by putting something in one's shoe.
"You can get power, but not a whole lot," he said of the shoe approach. On the solar front, he said, "It really would only work in Los Angeles."
The issue is, it takes quite a bit of energy to power all our digital devices. In part, he said, that's why we hear every now and then about a cell phone or PC catching fire when a battery glitch occurs.
"Your typical laptop is a bomb," Rashid said. Even an iPod or cell phone battery has a whole lot of potential energy in a small space. "If you at any point thought that would be released all at once you wouldn't put that in your pocket. It would blow a nice hole in you."
We also talked about more pleasant subjects--in particular, some of the work that Microsoft researchers have been doing to deliver basic technology to get farming tips and health care to the rural poor.
The company's Project Green uses DVDs to bring farming tips to remote farmers in India, while another effort aims to distribute information on crop conditions to shared community cell phones via text messages.
Update: One other interesting tidbit--Microsoft plans to change the name of Boku, the programming tool for kids that Rashid demonstrated in his keynote on Wednesday.
The thing is, a Google search for Boku turns up some extremely not-safe-for kids images. This time, Rashid said Microsoft will look for a name that has no association to anything, just to be safe. I suggested Visual Studio 2010 Junior Edition, but I don't think that's the route they will go either.
Check below for a video interview I did with Rashid on Project Green and health-related initiatives. Sorry, no battery talk in the video.
Microsoft researcher Rick Rashid speaks to developers Wednesday at the Professional Developer Conference.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)LOS ANGELES--As he began his speech on Wednesday, Microsoft Research chief Rick Rashid talked up his ties, not just to Microsoft's products, but also to those from Apple.
"If you use a Macintosh or an iPhone, which honestly I would not recommend, you would be using code that I wrote more than 25 years ago," Rashid quipped to a crowd of developers at the company's Professional Developer Conference here. In his Carnegie Mellon days, Rashid helped create the Mach kernel that is at the heart of Mac OS X (Note: I originally stated that it was at the heart of FreeBSD, but others have pointed out that's not accurate).
Rashid noted that it's also a testimony to the staying power of core technology ideas.
"If you'd asked me 25 years ago if I thought code I was (writing, would be) running today on a cell phone, my reaction would have been 'what's a cell phone?'" Rashid said.
"It just shows you things really do survive and get used in interesting ways," Rashid said.
Later in his talk, Rashid is expected to show off some of the latest technology from the labs. (I'm betting we see Microsoft's Sphere surface computer, since Microsoft started the keynote Wednesday with a thank you note to the company that makes the display that powers Sphere.)
Update, 9:12 a.m. PDT: Microsoft put out a release noting some of the things Rashid will cover.
Microsoft plans an update to its Worldwide Telescope software and also detailed the Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008, software developer tools that aim to "make it easier to develop loosely-coupled concurrent and distributed applications."
Microsoft sensor technology is being used to create maps for research and work related to protecting the environment.
(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET News)Other topics include: DryadLINQ (a project that enables ordinary programmers to write large-scale data parallel applications to run on large PC clusters), a tool to help kids learn to program known as Boku, as well as Second Light, a surface computing research project I wrote about earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Microsoft researcher Feng Zhao is discussing how computers factor into the world's energy use. In the U.S. for example, computing uses about 1.5 percent of all electricity, according to a 2006 EPA report. However, computers can also be used to make other systems, such as heating and air conditioning, more efficient.
A slide of updated telescope software features.
(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET News)Zhao showed a sensor map from Microsoft research that helped chart the temperature in the main convention hall over the last couple of days. He noted that Microsoft uses 10,000 such sensors throughout its data centers.
"It's...good for our customers," he said. "It's also good for the world."
Update, 9:45 a.m. PDT: Rashid discussed the update to the telescope software, which Microsoft is calling the "equinox" update.
The new update, going live now, offers more than double the data of the original release, including 55 new panoramic images from the Apollo moon and Pathfinder Mars missions.
The demos drew loud applause as Rashid showed a wide range of views, including a display of the entire viewable universe.
On Monday, I had a chance to talk with Windows VP Mike Nash about Microsoft's approach with Windows 7. In addition to his comments for this article, I also did a brief video interview with him that is posted below.
Nash's overall summary of Windows 7 was this:
"The focus is on making sure the things you do (today) are easier and that the things you always wanted to do are possible," he said. "There's a lot of work we've done to just make things easier and faster."
Of course, users will be the ultimate judge of whether Microsoft meets this goal. It set out many of the same objectives with Vista.
