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It should better not take THAT long...

Even with 2019's hardware, Vista will not run at acceptable speed...

I wonder if it'll run on the ESPER system?

Um, I'm not sure you can spell a numeric value wrong can you? lol... I take your point...

Well, personally I don't think it will be the second half of 2009, it will be 2011 at the earliest I would guess, but not because of what happened with Vista, but because of what other OS's including OS X will have in them by then, MS will need to catch up and add those features too. They have to catch up on 2 fronts, the OS and the mobile phone side and come up with something to take on the iPhone, which will mean a version of windows that can run on a small platform and compete (even at the current 2008 level) with some of what the iPhone and Leopard are doing as far as the API level is concerned.

To be honest, I think MS needs to bite the bullet and start again (just like Apple had too).

Maybe a scenario such as...
1. grabbing the Win2008 server as a base (I know, I think *nix would be better, but that is never going to happen)
2. only managed .Net code goes on top, nothing else
3. no access directly to hardware
4. older win32 code (so basically most of the code today) to run in a "classic" mode.

This would allow MS bring a stable platform that is new, safe, light and agile (that is, can run on a lot of platforms) with no baggage. Maybe this is what MinWin is?

Now the biggest objection people would have that classic mode would be slow for gamers, and I think it probably would as you still don't have (or shouldn't have) complete access to hardware.

I suggest MS bring out a very light stripped down OS esp. for gamers that is basically a stripped down XP that does one thing, runs games, and runs them fast, maybe a simple interface similar to Media Centre perhaps (I haven't seen what the XBox does, but maybe it has a simple interface they could use)...

The other reason this is a good idea is that developers would move existing code from Win32 across to .Net much faster as noone wants to run stuff in "classic" mode. It happened on the Mac, so should happen on the PC (thought the base is so much larger).

Anyway, just some thoughts I had the other day...

Well, personally I don't think it will be the second half of 2009, it will be 2011 at the earliest I would guess, but not because of what happened with Vista, but because of what other OS's including OS X will have in them by then, MS will need to catch up and add those features too. They have to catch up on 2 fronts, the OS and the mobile phone side and come up with something to take on the iPhone, which will mean a version of windows that can run on a small platform and compete (even at the current 2008 level) with some of what the iPhone and Leopard are doing as far as the API level is concerned.

Well in a manner, that is what MinWin and Windows Core are about - stripping down the OS to the bare "essentials" (sorry, I don't agree that a GUI is an essential) and then building up from there. It should allow them to separate out parts of the system for development, and integrate them back in more efficiently. So, it may be possible that a H2 2009 or H1 2010 might be possible. We'll see.

You are right though about catching up. Even Vista has needs to play catchup in many respects. ;-)

or SP1

Vista's a good OS, and even Vista's "failure to penetrate the market" got more users in the first week than Linux has had in its entire existance; Office 2007 is a nice piece of software, the natural evolution of the Office system; and like it or not, OOXML is where the industry is going. If you want to talk about Microsoft's failures, talk about deadends like FrontPage, Outlook, and J#... at least you got MSBob right.



Impressionable college students who didn't know any better, even when they should have?

Vista seems to be doing quite well when the purchaser of a new computer is not given a choice.

Vista may indeed become a good OS once all the bugs are worked out. But, then again it may go the way of WinME if Win7 is any better.

They do have a choice...its called Apple. However, Leopard wasn't all that much better than Vista at launch. Atleast Microsoft had honest to goodness workable reasons for interface changes which made it more workable for moms and pops who have no idea what they're doing. Apple changed things cause its pretty.

This is coming from the guy who runs Vista as his day to day, his iBook for everything else and has multiple linux servers.

"...They do have a choice...its called Apple..."

And if they do not want to spend so much money? What happened to their dream for a new computer?

Most users don't have a choice as most users don't want to spend a grand (or more) on a computer just to send e-mails and surf the internet.

/IF/ Apple released budget machines then I would agree with your statement, however they don't.

The comparison between Me and Vista it's really starting to get on my nerves. Windows Me was a dead-end, the closure of an entire line of operating systems. Even if Windows 7 arrives right on time, it will be built on Windows Vista's foundations. Vista and Me have nothing in common.

Edited 2008-01-17 14:19 UTC

The comparison between Me and Vista it's really starting to get on my nerves. Windows Me was a dead-end, the closure of an entire line of operating systems. Even if Windows 7 arrives right on time, it will be built on Windows Vista's foundations. Vista and Me have nothing in common.

It may have been the EOL for Win9x, but it was also a hybrid with NT that landed its way into XP. (There were a good number of error messages in WinME that were from the NT series system that did not even exist in Win9x. It also crashed more similarly to NT series than 9x - BSOD and all.)

As far as market penetration goes, the comparison is valid. For other purposes, the comparison may not be. In both cases, they were released a tad prematurely - WinME was a really early beta of what would become WinXP where they were merging Win9x legacy over to NT, it allowed for a decent transition. Vista, otoh, is an early release of whatever is next. In both cases, they worked well on good hardware, but not commodity hardware. (I've run both.)

And in both cases they still have a long ways to go before they would really be fully ready for market, but by then, they will have been replaced. (WinME just didn't have enough holes punched in it for a good amount of hardware and software to be usable. Vista isn't too different, and more blatantly obvious.)

Ahh yes, thats it. Bash linux. For all the time and money MS has spent on building Windows, you would think that Linux would be like shadow puppets compared to HDTV. Yet that little "hobby" OS has MS pretty damn concerned. And didnt we just see the OLPC, Asus Eeee, and the Dell laptops selling like hot cakes? Give it a rest. You just can't compete with a free OS. You just end up going broke in the end.

I think Microsoft will need to worry much more about their existing customers running Xp or Vista than Linux.

The reason XP was a success was that it replaced Windows ME/9x. To the users of these systems XP was a major upgrade. To users of win2k or NT4 an upgrade was more questionable. Thes people allready had all the OS they needed, why spend the extra money

The same thing is happening with Vista, the only difference is that there are even more people that allready have all that they need, and that Vista is more expensive, both in terms of licensing and in terms of training and software and hardware upgrade costs.

Selling a new OS in just two years time from now will be very hard. Most companies will not have gotten any return of investment on their upgrades to XP or Vista by then.

And to the few people that actually are thinking of changeing their OS, they will have to compete with even more mature Linux and MacOS versions than we see today. Given all this, I think Microsoft will have a very hard time getting their development money back if they release yet another OS this soon.

You stated some of my thoughts...

of course MS is in the not-so-envious position that both outside people and shareholders are expecting them to deliver both another version of cash-cow MS Office and a new version of the thing Office runs on. Plus there is a whole ecosystem around it, just look at all the books and CD-Roms about the MS Office Apps, XP/Vista, IE7 'secrets' etc. And those nice hardware manufacturers.

All (most) of those people will get nervous if MS does not get something new out when the old stuff does not create enough value for them anymore.

However, too rushed, and there might be another Vista scenario... it's like being between a rock and a hard place.

Edited 2008-01-17 08:01 UTC

To users of win2k or NT4 an upgrade was more questionable. Thes people allready had all the OS they needed, why spend the extra money

Probably why NT4 and Win2k are still in use - not to mention that some programs that people relied on weren't ported to newer versions of Windows. Same will keep people running XP.

And to the few people that actually are thinking of changeing their OS, they will have to compete with even more mature Linux and MacOS versions than we see today. Given all this, I think Microsoft will have a very hard time getting their development money back if they release yet another OS this soon.

Doesn't matter when Microsoft releases a new OS - they'll still have a harder time recouping their costs. Why? Its hard to compete with free (Linux), especially when said competitor isn't really trying to compete with you. (You know a company is at its end when its only competitors aren't trying to compete with it - b/c then its only a one-way competition which nearly always kills the one trying to compete.)

J# was never really supposed to be a serious language, more as a migration path for Visual J++ and Java shops looking to go .net. Personally, I think it was really half done to rub Suns face in .Net, kinda like the J2EE petshop demo MS ported over that took about one fifth the code and ran 2-3 times as fast. At any rate, I doubt anyone seriously expected J# to go anywhere, its more of a "Because we can" thing like Cobol .net.

Outlook Express and Frontpage being failures really depends on how you look at them (you could throw IE < 7 in there too) All three are quite widely used, but all three blow serious chunks and spent years (sometimes decades) in total stagnation.

If I were to point at serious MS failures, I would pull them more from the various development models they have been pushing over the years. XP went a long way towards fixing dll hell, but it was only with .net that we finally got pain free deployment on windows (or we will as soon as the framework is on 100% of the machines). COM was a really good idea, but only really magnified the whole deployment issue because of the added nessicary step of registration. DCOM and ActiveX were both security nightmares of epic proportions. VB < 6 was a fantastic idea that was only ever rivaled by delphi, but it pretty much encouraged bad programming practices. The JET Database engine was only ever really acceptable for a single user, but was marketed as being a multi user solution. We were told to put everything in the registry, which made settings migration a nightmare, and contributed to what ended up being a serious performance bottleneck (its ironic, they told us ini files were bad, but now the "right" way is basically an xml based ini). Windows programming has been a long, long, long road of good ideas either not fully thought out, or just implemented poorly.

Are you sure about this?

There are probably more copies of OpenOffice then Office 2007 running on machines today.

If you actually count the number of public Office 2007 format documents published on the web, it doesn't look at all like OOXML is "where the industry is going".

http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/archive/20070813-1201

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/bulletins/jan08.php#feature

Edited 2008-01-18 02:14 UTC

"Vista is the biggest debacle I can remember from Microsoft land, and that includes Office 6.0, Office 2007, WinME, MS Bob, and the failed MS-OOXML format."

I would hardly call Office 2007 a debacle. It's actually a pretty good Office suite. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it is a failure.

"Still, by late '09 Linux users on the desktop will have doubled (maybe tripled) again, and where do you think those users will come from?"

You think Linux's market share will double or triple in a year? That's downright insane. Linux will continue to grow, but 200% growth in one year? No Way

Office 2007 cannot deal properly with ISO 26300 format files. That is a major shortcoming.

There is a plugin for Office (up to Office 2003) available from Sun that does deal properly with those file types, but it doesn't work for Office 2007 because the file-filter-plugin mechanism is broken. (Strange that ... it wasn't broken in the Office 2007 release candidate).

Office 2007 doesn't handle older MS Office formats that well, and rather than fix that deficiency Microsoft are blocking the formats, and they have deprecated VBA. If you want to read an older MS Office format document, you are better off using OpenOffice.org. Since you therefore require OpenOffice.org installed anyway, you may as well use the official ISO format to save your files in anyway. It is easier in re-training terms to make the transition from an older version of Office to OpenOffice than it is to learn Office 2007.

So why do need Office 2007 at all?

BTW, ASUS expects to sell 5 million EeePCs this year, despite competition from Everex Cloudbook and Nokia N810. There will also be a competition in the low-cost "surf-the-net-plus-email" desktop space from a number of vendors, including cheap PCs from Walmart and Sears. All of these systems will run Linux. Linux could easily double or triple is user base this year.

"I don't understand your point, really, I said that Office 2007 is a pretty good office suite, I did not say it was perfect.

"and they have deprecated VBA"

Deprecating VBA is a good thing. Time for it to go, the less COM that I have to deal with the better. The .net framework is MS's preferred API for development now, and it makes sense to deprecate VBA for it.

"If you want to read an older MS Office format document, you are better off using OpenOffice.org"

Or just use the registry fix. Much easier than installing OpenOffice. They blocked those formats because they are 15 years old, and crappy as hell, god forbid MS should move forward, just like apple deprecating the Carbon GUI in Leopard.

From what I've read, MS wanted to. But there was too much pushback from hardware vendors. Rewriting all those drivers, and having to meet the new security requirements was too hard. Poor vendors! Boo hoo!

"Looks like they are already screwing it up by providing both 32 and 64 bit versions. I thought this was supposed to be a clean break and straight to 64 Bits to avoid the problem people had the last time where some OEMs did not provide 64 bit drivers."

So, if they stick with 32 bit people can use the hardware they own...if they go to 64 bit people have to upgrade...which would you rather do? How is that screwing it up? There is also plenty of software that does not run on, and if it does, does not take advantage of 64 bits. The advantage of 64 bit is the ability to address larger memory. Since people here on osnews regularly bitch that Vista takes too much memory to run since they only have like 512MB, 64 bits is not an issue.

Rather upgrade. Most people I know upgrade motherboard, etc every 6 months or so anyway. The people that usually don't wont anyway because they are usually using computer for browsing or word processing.

Also would like to see all support for legacy hardware go too. Make a clean break and start new for a change.

removed

Edited 2008-01-19 13:45 UTC

Servers will likely be 64-bit only...

Client has the disadvantage of having to deal with lots of widely varying hardware. If you buy reasonable-quality hardware, chances are that their 64-bit drivers will be very close to their 32-bit drivers in quality and performance, because they would be compiled from the same source base.

"It never ceases to amaze me the wonderful marketing machine Microsoft is.

It still has an old year unaccepted OS and they are talking about the next version ..."

They didn't talk about anything, they released a very preliminary version to a few testers quietly and somebody blabbed.

"I won't give any credit to any Microsoft desktop OS rumour for at least the two coming years. "

That's right it is RUMOUR.

I might as well get my prediction in. Basing my prediction on release history and actual performance, rather than marketing rhetoric, I'm going to bet on the 2012-2013 time frame for retail availability.