...but maybe a number?

If that’s the case, Windows 7 might end up as Windows 2010, because that’s how far away the new Windows will be. Microsoft has flip-flopped on the cadence of its desktop client over the years, sometimes promising a new OS every 18 months (usually after the arrival of an OS which was years overdue), othertimes two years or more.

The official word on Windows 7, however, came in July during Microsoft’s Global Exchange sales conference in Orlando, when a spokesman said that “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.”

So that’s at least three years from Vista’s arrival, or two years from today, and maybe then some – which means late 2009 through to early 2010 as the initial timeframe, but marching onwards through 2010 if need be. Okay, so maybe it’ll be Windows 2011...

THIS WEB ADDRESS IS daviduuk http://davidlower.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

Windows Vienna due in 2009 2010
Vista's replacement should take two-and-a-half years

Microsoft is refusing to discuss the next version of Windows – currently being referred to

as Windows Vienna – in an effort to encourage people to focus on Vista.

With Vista just out the door, Microsoft is now drawing up plans to deliver its follow-up

client operating system by the end of 2009, according to the executive in charge of building

the product's core components.

That would be a much faster turn-around than Vista, which shipped more than five years after

Windows XP, but Vista was exceptional, said Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of

development with Microsoft's Windows Core Operating System Division.

Microsoft originally planned for its XP follow-up to include a number of radical changes to

Windows, including a new file system and a reinvented user interface, but after the

company's products were hit by widespread worm outbreaks in 2003, Microsoft redirected

almost its entire engineering effort to locking down Windows with the XP Service Pack 2

release.

"We put Longhorn on the back burner for a while," Fathi said. "Then when we came back to it,

we realised that there were incremental things that we wanted to do, and significant

improvements that we wanted to make in Vista that we couldn't deliver in one release."

Vista shipped about two-and-a-half years after XP SP 2, and Vista's follow-up is expected to

take about the same amount of time, according to Fathi. "You can think roughly two,

two-and-a-half years is a reasonable timeframe that our partners can depend on and can work

with," he said. "That's a good time frame for refresh."

That time line would put Microsoft's next client operating system out by the end of 2009.

Last year, Microsoft said that the code name for this Vista follow-up is Vienna, but Fathi

said he could not disclose the current name. "We've been told not to use it publicly," he

said.

So what will be the coolest new feature in Vienna?

According to Fathi, that's still being worked out. "We're going to look at a fundamental

piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don't know what it is," he said.

"Maybe it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers."

"It's too early for me to talk about it," he added. "But over the next few months I think

you're going to start hearing more and more."

Quote

Vista Transformation Pack 8 - Scheduled to Mid-November…

CHANGES WINDOWS XPSP2 INTO VISTA  CLICK LINKS FOR INFO AND MY INFO IN THE forum.  

LINK 1

http://www.jcxp.net/forums/index.php?s=88024514c21809e3409f5212146175e0&showtopic=22388

LINK 2http://www.windowsxlive.net/?p=1456

If you want to comment on this article, post your thoughts