Several industry sources have confirmed to TG Daily that a very early version of Windows 7, previously code-named Blackcomb Vienna, already has been shipped to “key partners” as a “Milestone 1” (M1) code drop for validation purposes. A roadmap received by TG Daily indicates that the new operating system will be introduced in the second half of 2009.
While it has generally been believed that Windows 7 was scheduled for a 2010 debut, Microsoft has revised the roadmap and apparently moved up the release date by a few months: A recently distributed roadmap of the OS lists a release to manufacturing in H2 2009. Microsoft declined to comment on this date.
The current M1 drop is available to Microsoft partners in English only and has shipped in x86 and x64 versions. An interesting feature that has been highlighted by Microsoft is the ability of the M1 software to handle a heterogeneous graphics system consisting of multiple graphics cards from different vendors. A new version of the Media center is already integrated in this software, but supports PC speakers only at this time.
While it has generally been believed that Windows 7 was scheduled for a 2010 debut, Microsoft has revised the roadmap and apparently moved up the release date by a few months: A recently distributed roadmap of the OS lists a release to manufacturing in H2 2009. Microsoft declined to comment on this date.
The current M1 drop is available to Microsoft partners in English only and has shipped in x86 and x64 versions. An interesting feature that has been highlighted by Microsoft is the ability of the M1 software to handle a heterogeneous graphics system consisting of multiple graphics cards from different vendors. A new version of the Media center is already integrated in this software, but supports PC speakers only at this time.
If Microsoft will be able to keep the H2 2009 RTM (and most likely) release date in place, the company will have two busy. The M2 code drop is currently scheduled for April/May 2008, M3 will follow in the third quarter. The dates for the first Beta and the release candidate are still listed as “To be determined” but it doesn’t take much to see that the first beta versions could become available a year from now.
We will have more clarity on when we could see Windows 7 going into production will when Microsoft announces Windows Logo Program Changes for Windows 7. According to the policy of the firm, these changes will be announced 18 months prior to the scheduled RTM.
There are very few pieces of information about Windows 7 and the features it will bring available at this time. So far, we have heard only about new touchscreen features as well as – and probably most interesting – MinWin, a much smaller kernel of the operating system that takes up only 40 MB of memory.
News source: TG Daily
Link: Neowin Forum Discussion
At the rate Vista is going, it's not going to overtake XP by 2009. It will at best have ~30% of the market. Windows 7 AFAIK is going to use the same driver model and TCP/IP stack, so it will supersede Vista seamlessly. Vista will serve as a transition to Windows 7, which at that point should be free of the problems Vista has had with drivers and networking.
You must be joking
It will definitely be released 2009
It will be called
Vista Second Chance Edition
It will be what Windows 98 SE was to Windows 98 (PS for those wondering I like many skipped from 95 to 98 SE due to instability in 9
I'm not claiming 98 was as bad as ME
and Vista isn't really equivilent to ME
Vista is like the so so of 98 from yester year
Theres some interesting features but not enough.
So... what came after 2000?
Whistler and Blackcomb are 2 mountains in Canada that is also a holiday retreat to some Microsoft developers who came up with the codenames. This is a widely known fact as old as 2000, 2001.
Whistler and Blackcomb are 2 mountains in Canada that is also a holiday retreat to some Microsoft developers who came up with the codenames. This is a widely known fact as old as 2000, 2001.
no, nuefuse is right. When xp came out, it was version 5.1, longhorn was supposed to be 5.2, and blackcomb was supposed to be 6.0. It was only because of Microsoft's security push in 2003 that caused the change, which caused server 2003 to be delayed and caused microsoft to push off blackcomb.
-gosh
Vienna is not the current codename from what I've seen. Vienna came about in '05 or '06 as a replacement for Blackcomb. The current codename seems to be simply Windows 7.
The interesting thing though, which doesn't appear to be mentioned at all ... is that Microsoft was going down the path of alternating major and minor releases. XP (v5.1) was a minor release after Windows 2000. If Vista was the major release (being version 6.0), and Windows 7 also appears to be a major release, then what is happening with the interim release? Should we expect a Windows 6.1? The 2nd half of 2009 is only 18-24 months out, so that doesn't leave a lot of time for an interim release of Windows if this report is correct. If there was one, it would probably have to be out late this year, but there's no word of anything coming. Or is Microsoft skipping the minor release and jumping straight to 7?
Last edited by Lamerz4391 on 17 Jan 2008 - 00:26
Remove all backward compatibility with anything pre XP.
OS must be installed on on SSD only.
64bit only
Signed drivers only
Remove all backward compatibility with anything pre XP.
While this has gotta be done at some point, it's gonna cause alot of headaches particularly with businesess. It is probally better MS did that in stages, give companies a chance to get upto speed.
OS must be installed on on SSD only.
Until SSD drive are more affordable, that is not gonna happen.
64bit only
Windows 7 was suppose to be 64-bit only, but there is still demand for a 32-bit version and probally won't change for some time.
Signed drivers only
Vista x64 does this already but enforcing it 100% is gonna be a royal pain in the backside (since alot of companies do not get their drivers signed)
That is what I think anyway, take with a grain of salt
Run all legacy programs in an isolated virtual machine. This shouldn't be a problem for them at all, computers are more than fast enough now and they have the virtualization technology to do it. It worked fine for Apple while they weened their OS X users off their old crappy classic applications.
Cutting off a vast majority of business customers (and a good portion of home users) from upgrading is just not a good idea.
The idea here is to make an attractive product.
No! Not full VMs. Microsoft should implement something akin to a basic version of the SoftGrid app virtualization functionality in the OS, and install legacy apps in their own "virtualized" file/registry space by default. Much less system overhead, while still preventing a legacy/crappy app from hosing the operating system.
Remove all backward compatibility with anything pre XP.
OS must be installed on on SSD only.
64bit only
Signed drivers only
what are ya a total idiot?
thats the last thing they should do
This helps no-one except M$.. and only serves to control what we do with our bought and paid for equipment.. it should be SCRAP SIGNED DRIVERS!
That's what I meant, I just didn't know how to describe it.
Remove all backward compatibility with anything pre XP.
While this has gotta be done at some point, it's gonna cause alot of headaches particularly with businesess. It is probally better MS did that in stages, give companies a chance to get upto speed.
OS must be installed on on SSD only.
Until SSD drive are more affordable, that is not gonna happen.
64bit only
Windows 7 was suppose to be 64-bit only, but there is still demand for a 32-bit version and probally won't change for some time.
Signed drivers only
Vista x64 does this already but enforcing it 100% is gonna be a royal pain in the backside (since alot of companies do not get their drivers signed)
That is what I think anyway, take with a grain of salt
jesus does no-one here get sarcasm? his post was a jab at how microsoft can excel themselves further on vista's current shortcomings
Cutting off a vast majority of business customers (and a good portion of home users) from upgrading is just not a good idea.
The idea here is to make an attractive product.
So you think that businesses love or use Vista much ? ?
This helps no-one except M$.. and only serves to control what we do with our bought and paid for equipment.. it should be SCRAP SIGNED DRIVERS!
Err the point of signed drivers is to stop crap drivers from taking the machine or it's core bits out
Until SSD drive are more affordable, that is not gonna happen.
We're probably talking 2010 or longer for the next Windows OS to come out really. And 2 plus years is a long time, SSD's will be standard for the OS by then ... mark my words
This helps no-one except M$.. and only serves to control what we do with our bought and paid for equipment.. it should be SCRAP SIGNED DRIVERS!
Err the point of signed drivers is to stop crap drivers from taking the machine or it's core bits out
I KNOW what the reasoning was.. but the reality is that signed only drivers are unduely restrictive, both for the user and innovations in tech.
Signed drivers only serve to switch control of your pc from YOU, the user and buyer, to Redmond.
Bad...
Until SSD drive are more affordable, that is not gonna happen.
We're probably talking 2010 or longer for the next Windows OS to come out really. And 2 plus years is a long time, SSD's will be standard for the OS by then ... mark my words
Uh, no. They won't. They may be more common in laptops by 2010 (But hard drives will still have most of the market share by a large margin), but you won't be seeing them in desktops very often.
The technology is still too small and expensive for that kind of deployment, and no one is going to be in a position to manufacture those kind of devices in the kind of quantity you're talking for a very long time.
This helps no-one except M$.. and only serves to control what we do with our bought and paid for equipment.. it should be SCRAP SIGNED DRIVERS!
I don't think you understand what driver signing is. We aren't talking about WHQL certification, we're talking about codesigning.
Signing doesn't "help" MS other than by making customers happier and reducing support incidents. It's not like we get paid whenever Nvidia compiles a driver and signs it with their own certificate.
Signing lets the OS verify that a driver hasn't been corrupted or tampered with. Corrupted drivers (either in download, or in memory) are a very common cause of crashes / blue screens. Identifying them early, which codesigning lets it do, allows the system to respond better to such problems.
Vista is a major release which is already successful, whether you skip it or not
Why is that?
Bad logic there. By skipping both Vista and Windows 7 it would be way more than 3 years wouldn't it.
Bad logic there. By skipping both Vista and Windows 7 it would be way more than 3 years wouldn't it.
Well you caught me on that one
I was referring to XP/Vista/7 specifically. If Vista (or Longhorn, or Blackcomb) would have been released two or three years ago as it was supposed to I'd probably have switched. But XP 5 or 6 years old now and a very mature OS by now and I can't think of a rational reason to switch from an OS which I know in- and outward to a new one which is still infantile and doesn't really hold any reasons for me to make the switch.
If MS thinks they can get it out in 2009 it must be going one hell of a lot better than Vista's development!
Windows 7 will be better than Vista......"OK DADDY"
Last edited by jwjw1 on 16 Jan 2008 - 21:47
Actually they have stripped the kernel to the bare skeleton and are basically starting from scratch on it. Google for "minwin".
It's nice to actually be exited about an OS again; Vista was a whole lot of "meh". I have high hopes for Windows 7.
Last edited by TRC on 16 Jan 2008 - 23:35
If MS thinks they can get it out in 2009 it must be going one hell of a lot better than Vista's development!
Understand that the 5+ years between XP and Vista release was not strictly Vista development. Microsoft pulled a number of resources from Longhorn to focus on XP security for a significant period of time and getting XP SP2 out the door. From my understanding, that focus led in large part to the "reboot" in Longhorn development, switching to Server 2003 codebase for Vista development, and the emphasis on security in the Vista release.
Not sure what you are saying here. Are you saying there was a service pack for Vista a few weeks after release? Really?
"I have to give MS credit...at least fanboy talk of 7 will take the heat off Vista in a sense."
Right, I'm sure that Microsoft is developing Windows 7 solely to get the fanboys talking and take the heat off of Vista.
In regards to whether 7 will be better than Vista ... I'm sure it will be. Each release has improved on the previous one, excepting WinME of course. 95 -> 98 -> 98SE -> Win2K -> WinXP -> Vista
Yes, I said Vista improved on XP. The horror!
It's not very easy to make software depend on OS version. Vista can easily run code written many years ago.
But if your programm "hack" into the system then you're on your own. You programs really wants to **** in System32? O'RLY? Kill it with fire!
Again, there were reasons for that (see post 8.5). Maybe not the best ones in the world, but Windows is a heck of a lot more secure today because MS took the hit on Longhorn development to focus on XP SP2 firewall and security changes, and security in Windows Vista.
Right ... I just looked two years into the future and saw that NeoWin posted an article about another delay in the release of Windows 7. Geez. I'm not saying it will happen for sure, but come on ... you are being negative based on nothing. At least the article was based on info from "sources" in the industry. Given vague sources in the industry or nothing, I'll take the info from vague sources (with the requisite grain of salt).
You can't compare gaming consoles to personal computers in this regard.
Last edited by TRC on 17 Jan 2008 - 10:54
Anyway, All new graphics cards have 256bit memory busses. (The ATI one in the Wii is 128bit, though.) The processors in the Wii/360/PS3 are not x86, and comparing them to the stuff in your computers is meaningless.
AFAIK, there aren't any general purpose CPUs above 64-bits. We won't even need to think about 128-bit CPUs for decades.
Graphics cards, on the other hand, need the larger memory busses because they deal with large chunks of data like textures pretty exclusively.
Last edited by MioTheGreat on 17 Jan 2008 - 19:13
Anyway, All new graphics cards have 256bit memory busses. (The ATI one in the Wii is 128bit, though.) The processors in the Wii/360/PS3 are not x86, and comparing them to the stuff in your computers is meaningless.
AFAIK, there aren't any general purpose CPUs above 64-bits. We won't even need to think about 128-bit CPUs for decades.
Graphics cards, on the other hand, need the larger memory busses because they deal with large chunks of data like textures pretty exclusively.
Decades? No... I think in 10-12 years time we'll be at 128 bit.. and after that it'a all quantium computing.
Until we start hitting exabytes of memory (That's a billion gigabytes) we won't need 128-bit addressing capabilities. That's decades away, even if Moore's law holds true, which it won't because we're going to be hitting some major semiconductor miniaturization walls in another 10-15 years. As soon as we hit the atomic level (We're already dealing with gate oxide layers like 5 atoms thick, so we're pretty damned close.), we're going to have issues. Keep in mind that an atom is only about 0.1nm across, and you need many atoms to build a working transistor that doesn't leak current like a sieve.
And quantum computing will never take over entirely. If/when we ever see any kind of quantum computing technologies hitting the mainstream, it'll never replace standard bits entirely. It'll likely be some kind of hybrid, with like a quantum coprocessor for special operations (Like Shor's algorithm) that need it.
Last edited by MioTheGreat on 17 Jan 2008 - 20:31
Hopefully Wine will be at 1.0 by then and we can all switch to Linux.
f**k the Protected Mode. I wanna feel myself Real Mode Asm Hero again!!!
Go look up what FUD means.
"I don't think that word means what you think it means."
Sorry your Vista isn't usable... Mine works like a champ.
Signed
One step forward, two steps back? I'm on XP and I have two old ATI Radeons and an Nvidia 8800GTS. So, what happened, they broke this capability in Vista and are now presenting this as some new feature?
No, seriously, fixing a current incompatibility isn't something that one should present as revolutionary... I'm looking forward to Vista's successor, but not because of minor bullet points such as this.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.