At the Microsoft PDC 2008 show you hear a lot of rumors about tomorrows Windows pre-beta bits we're supposed to receive. One thing's not a rumor - PDC 2008 attendees get all the software Microsoft's handing out on a free 160MB portable drive. Nice.
Here are the rumors I'm hearing about Windows 7. We'll see tomorrow if any of these are accurate, but some rumors are more than just Windows 7 features.
- Windows 7 pre-beta code is more stable than Vista's released 1.0 gold bits. Ya, I know what you're going to say... We should set the bar higher. But a lot of those early issues were due to driver problems and if Windows 7 is built on top of Vista's kernel, we won't likely see the same amount of those kinds of demos.
- Sleep code in Windows 7 has been completely rewritten from the ground up. I guess the Vista sleep code is bad? I thought that was just a problem Dell laptops have had for the last 10 years. Maybe not.
- Windows 7 pre-beta will be released as a Virtual PC/virtual appliance. Possibly, but I bet it'll be fully installable.
- Microsoft employees can't wait for the Windows 7 pre-beta to come out because they want to replace Vista on their desktops with the Windows 7 pre-beta. It'll have to be not only very stable to do this, but also run Office and a bunch of other third-party software for this to be even feasible. If it is, then Windows 7 is a lot further along than we've been led to believe.
- Windows 7 will have lots of ribbon menus. Yuck. Please, please, ... that would be my worst nightmare. SnagIt, my most favorite utility application, just added ribbon menus to its interface. Is that the world we're destined to operating in? Mac OS X is looking more like a viable alternative. Not.
I'm sure there's tons of other rumors floating around but those are the ones I've heard since arriving at PDC 2008. Note that none of these rumors were from Microsoft employees, just floating around among conference attendees.
BTW - The new R2 APIs (due Feb. 2009) for Office Communications Server look really great. Focus is on adding presence, voice and conferencing within business applications. If you've checked out Microsoft's OCS lately, you know this product has really come a long way.
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