By Ina Fried, 25 July 2008 09:01
NEWS
Microsoft Windows unit head Bill Veghte said on Thursday that Windows 7 development remains on track.
The company has officially said it would ship by January 2010 but top executives have also said from time to time that it would be done by the end of 2009.
Veghte said: "The product is tracking very, very well. We are committed and looking good, relative to our commitment - [shipping Windows 7] three years from general availability of Windows Vista."
Microsoft has released few details on the product, largely assuring customers that it would be making big architectural changes and that it will have a new multi-touch user interface.
Most of Veghte's talk, as expected, was on Windows Vista and how Microsoft sees a large perception gap. Veghte showed the Mojave Project, in which users predisposed against Vista reacted favourably when shown Vista when it was presented under the guise of being a new version of Windows, code-named Mojave.
He also demoed Internet Explorer 8, which he said would be released in final form later this year. An early beta was shown off at the Mix '08 trade show in the spring.
In the closing Q and A session, CEO Steve Ballmer was asked what Windows 7 would look like but declined to offer any new details saying to do so would be a "no-win" situation.
He said: "It's going to look great; It's going to be quite compatible," prompting laughter. "If I wanted to start selling Windows 7 today, we'd start selling Windows 7 today. Then you'd complain."
He did reiterate what has already been said, saying that Windows 7 is designed to avoid making big changes. "The design point is compatible form the get-go in large measure," he said.
Comments
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1. anonymous
When they demo'd "Mojave", they obviously didn't try to "normal" things with the GUI. Even with SP1, the following items are still a chore:
Copy a lot of files from location to location
Open up a navigate a large remote network drive
Have more than a few applications at a time (and watch even a 2gb RAM machine run out of steam)
Dual monitor support is flaky
XPS is a poor and late competitor to PDF (MS - why did you even bother ?)
SP1 did not fix general speed issues (such as startup)
If the OS gets "busy", applications just pause - you can be typing and email or letter and just nothing happens for about 10 seconds.
Vista was a missed opportunity to create a really great OS - MS spent all its time worrying about security and good looks and less about everyday functionality. They should have got that right and then fixed the rest.
2. Karen Challinor
woot, nearly time to dig out those hardware requisition forms again and get busy buying upgrades for all the hardware we just bought for Vista
yaay Microsoft