Excited and whimsical speculation about future versions of Windows is a popular pastime, almost as much as complaining that newly-released versions are too different from the "old reliable" releases that everybody knows and (sometimes) loves. With Windows Vista recently celebrating its first birthday and preparing for the release of Service Pack 1, a team of developers at Microsoft is already busy working on its successor. While Microsoft has been pretty good about keeping the details of "Windows 7" under wraps, a few enthusiastic employees have leaked out a few details. As is usually the case in these situations, people have taken these tiny tidbits and added their own—often highly improbable—speculation. In this brief report, we'll review what we know, what we expect, and what we're calling bunk on, all based on our knowledge of Windows 7 from inside sources at Microsoft. 

Separating the wheat from the chaff

Would you buy a new operating
system from this man?

One thing we all know about Windows 7 is the management team that will be leading the project. Jim Allchin—the veteran who led the Windows XP and Vista teams—is gone, and in his place is Steven Sinofsky, who previously headed up the Office 2007 project. This has raised all sorts of speculation that the Windows user interface will be getting a similar sort of "face lift" as the venerable Office suite did in its last release. Some have even gone so far as to say it would be "Ribbon-based."

Windows 7 will get a facelift, but the extent of the UI changes are not yet known at Microsoft: current Windows 7 builds, which we have seen in person, use the Vista interface. Final designs for the UI have not yet been decided, and likely will not be for several months. If someone shows you any leaked screenshots of Windows 7, you can tell them that they have almost certainly been duped by enthusiastic fakers with a copy of Photoshop. Humans are visual creatures, and for most people the user interface is the only way to know that something has changed with a new release of the operating system. Unfortunately, the UI is typically the last thing to be finalized. Those of you who have watched the development of previous versions of Windows know that even once you start seeing concept UIs, nothing is set in stone.

With Windows 7, even the boot screen hasn't been designed yet. Currently, when Windows 7 boots, it displays a stylized "7" taking up most of the screen, drawn like an artist's quick sketch with thin lines using the Windows logo colors.

Don't throw away those Win32 apps just yet

Another common prediction is that Windows 7 will do away with backwards compatibility, and instead, run all previous Win32 applications in a built-in virtual machine. This rumor is false. The theme of "throwing it all away" and starting over with something fresh and new is a common desire in computer enthusiast circles. Typically, people will reference Apple's decision to virtualize the "Classic" Mac OS when the company released OS X, and assume that Microsoft is eager to do the same.

However, this argument completely ignores the reasons why Apple went the virtualization route in the first place: "Classic" applications were written to run on an OS with no memory protection and assumed that they could address any piece of memory they wanted. Such applications could only run in a virtual sandbox on a modern OS with full memory protection, such as Mac OS X.

Microsoft has no such limitation with Win32 applications, which ran natively on Windows NT ever since its first release in 1993. The Win32 subsystem has worked well ever since. Why would Microsoft throw away years of working, tested code to run Win32 apps in a VM sandbox, with all the attendant extra RAM requirements and barriers to inter-application communication?

We believe that Microsoft will be bundling the ability to run older applications in virtual machines if desired as part of the base Windows 7 product. Microsoft has been on this track for a while now: it released an older version of Virtual PC as a free download last year, and included a stripped-down version as part of Windows Vista Ultimate and Enterprise. Building a VM into Windows 7 will be the ultimate way of handling older applications that misbehave on modern versions of Windows. It will not be required, however.

The kernel gets smaller, but don't expect MinWin miracles

Some technology journalists who read about the "MinWin" demonstration immediately thought that the Windows 7 core would magically shrink to MinWin's specs of 25MB of disk and 40MB of RAM. Unfortunately, that excitement is a little misguided: MinWin is missing the entire graphical interface of Windows, as well as 90 percent of its functionality. Much of the bulk of Windows 7 will be due to the operating system supporting extra features that are not part of MinWin. However, the point of the exercise was to show that the Windows NT kernel continues to be developed and optimized.

Still, you can expect the trend of modularizing Windows to continue with Windows 7—Windows Server 2008 can already be run without the GUI, and this feature might eventually find itself in the consumer versions of Windows as well.

Multitouch? Multitouch.

The Internet was abuzz when a Microsoft employee in the Tablet PC division posted an excited message on his blog. Pulling no punches, he boasted that "if you are impressed by the "touch features" in the iPhone, you'll be blown away by what's coming in Windows 7."

Microsoft has been working on multitouch technology with its Surface technology, and parts of this technology are indeed coming to Tablet PCs and laptops—Microsoft Research's Steve Hodges demonstrated one possible way this transition could happen. Multitouch is definitely the future, and it looks like Windows 7 will be ready.

But when will Windows 7 be ready for the public? Microsoft isn't saying, but my source tells me it is farther along than most people think: most of the features have been locked down, and work is proceeding at a steady pace. Longhorn this isn't: Windows 7 is unlikely to fall into the tar pits of multiple, interlocking dependencies that plagued the Vista development team. Current estimates are for Windows 7 to appear in 2010, but it could arrive in late 2009 if all continues to go well.

The whole presentation (WMV) goes for approximately 1 hour and includes a very deep look into hypervisors. I’ve clipped out the 8-minute segment which Eric focuses on Windows 7 specifically to make it easier to watch. Because Eric goes into a lot of detail as well as background information about what is presented, and because it’s 2AM, I won’t regurgitate it. All I’ll say is that if you think Windows at its core is bloated, think again.

View Video: Long Zheng's Blog

Windows Seven: Think 2010

Windows Seven now has an official ship target — 2010.

At Microsoft’s Global Exchange (MGX) annual sales conference in Orlando this week, Microsoft shared a bit more — albeit at a high level — on Windows Seven, according to a copy of a slide deck I saw that was distributed to the field sales force during the conference. Among the information shared was that Microsoft is anticipating it will take at least three years from now to get the next version of Windows client out the door.

Last time anyone got Microsoft to talk dates about Windows Seven, the next big Windows client release, a Windows exec slipped up and said something about 2009.

Microsoft officials told MGX attendees that the company is currently internally planning Windows Seven. So far, the company has determined Windows Seven will come in both 32- and 64-bit flavors. No word on how many SKUs or any kind of guidance on features was provided, but Microsoft did say it would address both consumer and business segments with Windows Seven. Microsoft is mulling the concept of how to extend Windows Seven with subscription-based services, according to the deck — more like Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), which Microsoft currently offers to its Software Assurance customers, than Windows Live, however.

(MDOP builds on top of the Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop SKU — also only available to Software Assurance volume licensees. It includes: asset inventory, SoftGrid application virtualization, diagnostics and recovery toolset, advanced group-policy management and desktop error-monitoring capabilities.)

Maybe this talk of extending Windows with certain Software Assurance-only

subscription services is what spurred the Gartner Group to predict this week that Microsoft plans to make Software Assurance mandatory? Not sure….

Before Microsoft delivers Windows Seven, it plans to roll out an update to its current MDOP offering, Vista Service Pack 1 and then another MDOP update, according to the deck. Microsoft made no dates — tentative or otherwise — available for these planned releases via the deck.

Microsoft officials confirmed the veracity of this Windows Seven information. (I know! Shocking! Right after I spent the week dinging them for increasing opacity!)

The long version of Microsoft’s statement, courtesy of a Windows client spokesperson:

“As part of our ongoing outreach to enterprise customers and partners, Microsoft has begun sharing plans for how they will continue to deliver value to businesses in the future, including Software Assurance customers in particular. As part of this, we are sharing some preliminary information on Windows ‘7’ — the internal name for the next version of the Windows Client OS — as well as updates on other future Windows-related releases such as the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack. Microsoft is scoping Windows ‘7’ development to a three-year timeframe, and then the specific release date will ultimately be determined by meeting the quality bar. In the meantime, Microsoft is dedicated to helping customers deploy and get the most business value from their PCs using Windows Vista and related technologies like the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, and we’re encouraged by the response and adoption of these products so far.”

January 18th, 2008

Here’s what I know and don’t.

First off, Microsoft officially is refusing to say anything at all about Windows 7. They aren’t confirming, aren’t denying. They just aren’t talking about it. Period. They want to talk about Windows Vista and — to a much lesser extent — Vista Service Pack (SP) 1. (And they definitely don’t want to talk about “Shipping Seven,” the blog from someone allegedly working on the Windows 7 team.)

On Channel 9, I saw one Microsoft employee insist that Windows 7 is still in the planning phase — implying that it’s only slideware at this point. But being in planning doesn’t mean that early builds do not exist. In fact, I have heard a number of Microsoft folks have Windows 7 running on their systems. Is this the alleged M1 (Milestone 1) build mentioned in TG Daily’s story? I don’t know.

I have not (yet) found folks outside of Microsoft who claim to have a build of Windows 7. Does this mean such a build doesn’t exist? No. Top OEMs tend to see pretty early builds of new versions of Windows, so if a Windows 7 build is available, I bet some PC makers have seen it.

Could Windows 7 ship before Microsoft’s publicly stated date of 2010? Definitely. In fact, I will almost be surprised if it doesn’t, with the new Windows motto of under-promise and over-deliver.

When we first heard Microsoft was telling its salesforce that Windows 7 was going to be a 2010 deliverable, I figured the new Windows engineering regime had built some padding into that timeline so as not to face another Vista slip-date scenario. Plus, what better way to convince customers on the fence about upgrading to Vista or waiting for the next Windows build that they should make the move? (”Do you really want to wait at least three more years?”)

(And remember, before we heard the 2010 date, the Windows team had said publicly that it was on an every two-year release schedule. Microsoft shipped Vista in 2007. TG Daily says the new target is second half of 2009. If Microsoft is targeting holiday 2009, it would have to release to manufacturing Windows 7 in the late summer/early fall, in order for PC makers to get it preloaded on new PCs in time.)

Windows 7 is unlikely to include major architectural changes, Microsoft officials have said, making it even more likely to ship sooner rather than later.

What’s your bet? Will Windows 7 hit in 2009? And if it does, will that impact your Vista upgrade plans (either positively or negatively)?