While professional developers are clamoring for details on the new features of Windows 7, what most IT executives want to know is when it will ship and should they hold onto XP until then. With the dates Microsoft hinted at today, seems as if the answers are soon and yes. (However if you do want more info on the coolest new features of Windows 7 check out this slideshow from PC World.)
As for timing, Windows 7 remains on target for release three years after Vista, Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Windows and Windows Live, said during his much ballyhooed Windows 7 keynote speech at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. That means the early business release would come in late 2009 with general availability at the end of January 2010, if the OS remains on schedule. However Microsoft is not promising much more than a first public beta early next year. Subsequent test releases will follow depending on the feedback Microsoft gets.
Most heartening is that Microsoft is not trying to sell its developers on the pretense that Vista was an overwhelming success. Sinofsky admitted that one of Microsoft’s critical mistakes was the large numbers of hardware and application drivers that were incompatible with early Vista releases. Because the Windows 7 kernel is the same as Vista’s and WS2008’s drivers that have since been fixed to work with Vista will work with Windows 7. The upshot is that if XP is working for an enterprise today, and the need to refresh PC hardware is not urgent, within two years time, you will be swimming in choices from Microsoft, cloud computing vendors and other OS competitors.
Here’s a look at the new Windows 7 desktop. The sidebar has been killed, but gadgets remain.
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