Windows Vista successor scheduled for a H2 2009 release?

[fvbounty]

Originally Posted by TQ

Come with me if you want to live...

Not bad for made for TV series....

[polonyc2]

Originally Posted by TQ

Come with me if you want to live...

Originally Posted by ctal

Be sure to say that with the proper Austrian accent!

actually Arnie is not the only one to say that line anymore...in the new Terminator TV series the new female Terminator sent back in time to protect John Connor said the same line...nice homage to the movie by naming the new female cyborg 'Cameron'...since I'm sure everyone knows that the director of the first 2 Terminator movies was 'James Cameron'

[XJ.]

Well, I'll be a bit skeptical of this till I see it on the winsupersite, but MS is probably just looking to make Vista 2.0 (thought I doubt they'll reuse the Vista name). I'm figuring they have time to add maybe one major new feature and a few minor ones. The new OS will likely feature the slimmed down kernel that MS has been working on. The driver issues should be a non-issue by the time it ships, same for most software compatibility problems.

If MS can reduce base resource use, increase performance and fix up the UI a bit, people would probably be a lot happier.

[k0NG0]

All this talk about the new kernel is pretty uninteresting to be honest. A lot of the hype has been created by sites that don't actually know about OS internals much, that hear "slimmed down kernel" and think "boy, the next one won't use gigs of disk space and it'll be faster too".

The current kernel in Vista is pretty slim, that's always been the case with NT kernels (it's never been monolithic, since it was originally designed to facilitate ports to other architectures - NT3 ran on Alpha). And the one that's been demo'd doesn't do anything interesting. It will have to grow to actually serve as the underpinnings for a full OS.

What's huge about Vista (or XP for that matter) isn't the kernel. It's all the other stuff.

To spew some stats for XP: ntoskrnl.exe is 2.1MB in size. The exe files in WINDOWS\system32 are 49MB total. All the nt*.dll files in the same directory are 2.5MB total.

The impact of a smaller kernel on the install size will be minimal. The impact on system resource usage will be minimal. The kernel isn't where the fat's at. The kernel isn't where the slowness sits. It's all the other stuff.

A thing such as moving parts of graphics drivers out of kernel space into user space (which happened in Vista) means you have a performance hit. One of the reasons why gaming performance in Vista is worse compared to XP. Of course, it decreases the attack surface, which is a good thing.

So, in essence, don't listen to the jibber-jabber about the kernel. It's no panacea. Making it better is a good thing, but it won't make much of a difference if the rest stays the same.

One has to wonder if WinFS is done by Win7. I mean, seriously.

[maxidius]

Probably I will wait until the next Windows version rather than jumping onto Vista.

[TQ]

Originally Posted by polonyc2

actually Arnie is not the only one to say that line anymore...

Don't forget, the first one to say it was Michael Biehn in the very first "Terminator" film.
Remember, he played the fellow that was first sent back by John Connor to protect mother Sarah.

[TQ]

Originally Posted by k0NG0

One has to wonder if WinFS is done by Win7. I mean, seriously.

If that's the case then it becomes apparent that Vista was nothing more than a place-holder for Windows 7, hence the ME-like lifespan.

Thanks for the grain of insight on the kernel.

[k0NG0]

Originally Posted by TQ

If that's the case then it becomes apparent that Vista was nothing more than a place-holder for Windows 7, hence the ME-like lifespan.

Thanks for the grain of insight on the kernel.

Well, the Vista launch was originally scheduled for the second half of 2004, 3 years after XP. The plan, I believe, was 3-year iterations for Longhorn and then Blackomb and so on. So a 2½ year span between Vista and "Win7" isn't so short in those terms. It's just that the 5½ year wait for Vista included 2½ years of stuff going horribly wrong.

If you look at OS X releases, there have been 5 since March of 2001. I think Microsoft would like to be closer to that than having one major release every 6 years. Actually shipping stuff matters more than saying "oh, we've got stuff cooking that will melt your brain". So I think a H2 2009 release schedule for "Win7" is a good idea. It just needs to be an improvement significant enough to make customers easily convinced. Also, with a shorter time between releases, price probably needs to come down.

[TQ]

With all those sexy, big cat names Apple's OS marketing is just cooler than Microsoft's.
I don't know how significant the differences are between the releases are, though the move from - Panther, was it? - to Leopard required some re-writes of certain programs.

My business partner uses a Mac version of Pro Tools. She recently acquired a new Mac with Leopard and has had to wait for DigiDesign to update its Mac version of Pro Tools before she can migrate all her recording sessions over to the new box. Rumor has it that the release of the Leopard-ready Pro Tools is next week.

Her granddaughter lives with her and I often tease her that when the kid goes out into the world she's going to be shocked at mice that have more than one button.

[k0NG0]

Tiger was the one before Leopard. And yes, they market it differently, to good effect I'd have to say. Microsoft has an image problem and it's not improving. The current line-up is way too confusing with editions up the wazoo.

A basic, a super-duper and a business version is all that's needed. Basic should be cheap, and the price for a 3-pack of basic licenses should probably not be much more than a single super-duper license. Say $99 for basic, $199 for super-duper and $249 for the 3-pack, or one basic + one super-duper.
Basic doesn't need any 3D frills or stuff like that, the super-duper one will have all sorts of wacky stuff (all optional though). The upgrade from basic to super-duper should be the price difference between the two. If you only want a subset of the super-duper stuff, you can buy components through the web and install them. Say you want the nifty backup program in super-duper, well, $15 and it's yours.

They need improvements on many levels. They'll never be the sort of cool that Mac zealots that suckle at the teat of Jobs only go for. But they can do better than now, for sure.

[ctal]

Originally Posted by k0NG0

So I think a H2 2009 release schedule for "Win7" is a good idea. It just needs to be an improvement significant enough to make customers easily convinced.

Aye, there's the rub, as the saying goes. Although M$ has clearly become a sprawling bureaucracy that has managed to do a whole lot of things poorly, at a fundamental level I think that their biggest problem is that XP is good enough for most people for most purposes. The evolution of most of their earlier OS's, through XP, helped make possible essentially continuous improvement in how people and businesses function. With a few exceptions, notably Windows ME, each new OS provided real value to people, to business, to the economy, and to society. How do they provide that kind of improvement and value now, to a degree that will negate the overall economic costs of migrating everyone to a new OS?

Regards,
-- Al

[k0NG0]

But is it good enough? Or is it that the improvements you can make are outside the realm of what users themselves can visualize (and, currently, outside of what Microsoft can deliver). I don't believe for a second that XP can't be improved upon to such a high degree that people will abandon it. It works, sure, but it also sucks.

I'm not convinced the improvements in each new version actually did pay off (in terms of cost/value). People bought it, but that's to a very large extent due to the vendor lock-in forcing them to upgrade or essentially end up with stuff that won't work with new versions of software they rely upon. Upgrading out of necessity, not because of productivity increases or whatnot. That's the sledgehammer that Microsoft can wield. Upgrade or die.

There are tons of improvements you can make (better file system, smarter views of data, recovering from failures in a better way, moving the Internet closer to the desktop while maintaining security, make networking easier, make user accounts not suck, make management of security not suck, etc, etc).

Now, all of them aren't sexy and may be nontrivial to market, but Microsoft needs to put on the big-boy pants and do it. I think BillG retiring will be a good thing. I also think Ballmer needs to step down.

Data visualization alone is a huge topic. A hierarchical file system is only one view of many, and I'm convinced it's not the best one for all (or even most) purposes. If Microsoft could build a flat, fully indexed storage base for Windows to stand on, that would be superb. That makes Windows Explorer only a single view of the data.
Add to that a backup system that knows the underlying structure intimately, and you could make it a 3-click job backing up all your word files containing the word "job" or the tag "job", regardless of what folder they're in (since, well, it's not really in a folder at all). You could even make partitions a purely logical entity, that is D: is nothing but a visualization generated from a user-specified query.

(Some of these are huge and complex things. They won't be ready for Win7 that's for sure, but there are still improvements to make.)

[polonyc2]

isn't Bill Gates stepping down as CEO early this year?...maybe Steve Ballmer will incorporate a different business model then his predecessor...do stuff that he didn't have the stugots to do while playing second fiddle to Bill

I think Vista would have been MUCH more widely accepted had DX10 been all that it was hyped to be...DX10 has been a colossal failure at this point which offers little to nothing more then XP (visually) at the cost of performance...no WinFS, no DX10---why should I upgrade to Vista again?...oh yeah, the Aero Glass desktop

[TQ]

Heh...polony said "stugots"...

[k0NG0]

The DX10 thing was hyped to death. And from what I saw, most of the hype came from "enthusiast" sites, not from MS PR. And from game publishers. Granted, it was a bit pathetic that the DX10 upgrade was a major selling point for a new OS.

As for Ballmer, I think both Gates and he have failed miserably at keeping Microsoft's innovator status. I don't think the blame falls solely on just Gates, that would mean Ballmer is/was content to get all his pitches killed and just play the borderline psychotic clown yelling "developers" or working up a sweat throwing chairs. The money's good, sure, but I think he's more human than willing to put up with that for the last ten years or so.

MS hasn't had an original idea yet in the 21st century, and we've used up 8 years of it already. They grew complacent and it's hard transitioning from a purely reactionary way of doing business to actually leading with innovation. That they're still in business is because of their monopoly, a very handy thing to have when you're stuck treading water.