This is BlackCombe all over again
Remember when the successor to Windows XP, codenamed Blackcombe, was supposed to be released "within 2 years".
How long did it take in the end? Was it 5 years? And when it popped out it was Windows Vista.
A posting on Microsoft's Dutch site suggests we'll have to wait until 2012 for the next release of Windows. Microsoft declined to comment and the message was rapidly deleted, but was grabbed by Ina Fried at CNet and a host of bloggers. The post, celebrating the first birthday of Windows 7, said that Microsoft was hard at work …
the MS OS evolution makes a lot more sense if you posit a "missing" OS between XP and Vista that was eventually abandoned. this explains why vista didn't do half the things they said it would - because it's technically a different OS - and also why it doesn't seem to have 5 years worth of improvements - because they weren't working on it for 5 years. The incremental improvements from XP to Vista to 7 then make sense
"Remember when the successor to Windows XP, codenamed Blackcombe, was supposed to be released "within 2 years".
How long did it take in the end? Was it 5 years? And when it popped out it was Windows Vista."
I remember Longshot (aka Longhorn). It was going to have all kinds of revolutionary stuff that we can probably be thankful did not materialize, but the real delay was waiting for hardware to catch up with the software bloat.
On a lighter note, where is the flying chair icon?
The Times They Are A-changin'
Biggest risk they've taken so far is actually Vista, and that paid off so well.
Their idea of a risk was use all the computers memory for the OS.
All that Gloss.
Even 7, when you turn off the useless crap, can do 300megs of ram. That aint bad, and if the services and bumf where coded correctly you should not go over 4/5max. 7 is 7 .
So at least another 6 months until 7 works correctly. Businesses implement test in the mean time, then rollout, then windows 8 comes out.
Sounds very familar to the nt4 > 2k push. They don't innovate, they just keep forcing the same old manure, and you keep eating it. Funneh.
Well I suppose they could schedule the release date for 24 December 2012.
That way if the World ends first there will be no problem, and failing that they could market it as a "nice Christmas present".
On the other hand if the release date was 21-23 December 2012, we could be talking about "cause" rather than "effect".
Dear Mr Ballmer,
Could you please:
1. Make sure that 8 comes with a fully working VM type XP compatibility mode? Including hardware accelerated graphics and cut n paste in and out of the VM? Make really sure it works properly.
2. Go back to the drawing board and design a modern operating system from the top down. Make a list of all the things that were wrong in Win95 that are STILL wrong, and fix them.
In this way, you can have support for old software, and finally fix the blundering kludgefest that is windoze.
For better virtual machine XP mode, just use the (free) VM ware player. Much faster, more stable (crashing it doesn't toast the host OS), and much better integration support. Oh, and it also has copy and paste and hardware accelerated graphics as well.
It's not 100% perfect - interaction with some, doubtless ropey, USB device drivers, is a little problematic at times - the F3507 mobile broadband device, for example, but it generally works very well.
... and I mostly agree. Last time I looked, VMware was free for 30 days, then worth 1 arm + 0.5 legs. Also, Ubuntu has a perfectly good free VM that does what I want anyway. My point was that in this instance, M$ would do well to repeat their sins with Netscape and include a good VM out of the box, and get it right. Then, we could get a free XP to go in it. If you're going to support old software by way of a VM, then you should supply the VM and the OS free, and keep plugging the holes in them, free, for as long as people want.
What I really want, is a brand new OS from M$, without all the legacy junk. Do what they did with the original NT project - start from scratch, using an industry standard language like ANSI C, and build a right-by-design OS for the 21st century. Then provide your developer community with all the tools needed to build right-by-design software on it.
You've got to draw a line under the past somewhere, and start fresh. That's what I want. Doubt that I'll get it though.
VMWare Server is free to use. No cost. Granted, the viewer is launched from their browser-based management console, so gets marked down for that.
Virtualbox is lightweight and has an application viewer, so feels more natural for Joe User. Kick them into full-screen mode and they don't know the difference.
When is Xen going to come out with a hosted solution?
I used WinXP for about 6 years without issue - decided not to go with Vista as I couldn't see the value of upgrading (good decision by all accounts). Win7 is pretty stable and I've been using it for a year now - and no real reason to want to upgrade again any time soon.
I would much rather they made sure that the software was stable and secure and perhaps get some of the bloat out of it before issuing a new version. Most of the "must have benefits" the marketing people tout are really not that much value. I really don't care how shiny it is, does it work?
Probably won't bother with 8 - wait until 9 comes out when I change the hardware. But then, I am officially a Grumpy Old Fart ®
"windows 7 kicks ass".
" i still cant fault it personly".
And yet you will still without question upgrade to 8.
If its so brilliant then you wont need to update, will you? Its only an O.S. after all.
You sir, are a fanboi.
Should MS align their update cycle with the wallet replenishment cycles of their poorest fanbois?
I don't mind a 2 year wait, in fact my personal belief is that it is better for consumers and small to medium sized businesses if operating systems have something closer to a 5 year release cycle.
Admittedly we needed something new rather quickly after Windows Vista, however much of what was served up in Windows 7 could have been delivered to Vista customers as a service pack.
Having not quite got around to Windows 7, but having got rid of Vista on the house desktop, with any luck soon to be followed by the Laptop.
The sheer affront of charging me for Vista SP1 (aka Windows 7) has now driven me to desperation and Linux.
MS can do what they like as far as I am concerned. Windows 7 ... 8 what ever, it's not like most commercial companies are still using XP or anything.
"Isn't it a good thing to get a new OS every few years, not every year? Less upgrading, more time to acclimatize, etc?"
The relevant question is "good for whom?" Of course I have no desire to upgrade all that often; there are far more interesting things to do with computers than to them. For the corporate bottom line, they want continuous upgrading :(
"Why would W8 be risky... seriously... is it due to big changes or due to external factors?"
At the purely rumor level, I have gotten hints that they are trying to force managed code. That might be the last straw for another chunk of the market.
My wife commented the same when I installed Office 2010 on the home PC. She doesn't like the having to click HOME to then click Send and Receive Mail.
At least its better than Office 2007.
As for O/S - in corporate we have just got Windows 7 and are fine with that. Don't see the need to upgrade. However agree with posters above that it should be rewritten/redesigned (with code reuse) from the top down. It would be nice to have a Microsoft OS Kernel and then a separate UI built on top - similar to the Linux environments with KDE/Gnome etc.
For a start I'm still on XP, but I'm thinking of upgrading. But I can't help shake off the feeling that I await the release of Windows 8 with more a sense of dread than a sense of enthusiasm. My reason is all the increasingly common industry wide moves towards more cloud like computing and server based data (ultimately so they can spy on the server/cloud data), always with a view toward using access to that data for more advertising (to make use of their spying moves), and of course we also have ever more integration of spyware as integral to new applications (to again make use of spying for advertising). Its all leading me to the thought and dread of what do we await from Microsoft, who are so determined to compete with Google?
All I can say is if they do dare to twist their OS further down this spying/advertising route, then they completely loose me onto Linux.
3 years after Win7, they release 8? Thats too soon. I think most people would agree 5 years would be about right.
MS are in the difficult position of being THE OS the people understand. So they cant change it too much, in case they scare the people, but at the same time, Windows is still using the same (very much working) formula since Win95. How can they evolve it, without including software (a la Apple) in case they again get sued for monopolizing, whilst keeping it familiar enough for the people to just pick it up an use it. Its tough. I think they will move towards the cloud for a lot of stuff, or at least have a lot of cloud support, but the issue with that is that MS dont have control over internet speeds. My connection for example is far to slow to allow any major cloud based activity.
BTW i use a Win7 Laptop and a MBP. IMHO WIn7 is the best OS currently. (as subjective as "best" is, its all i have to offer you)
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Your logic only works if you believe that XP and Server 2003 were service packs to Server 2000 - which it obviously wasn't, as most businesses are still running XP.
Server 2000 was NT 5.0 (as a replacement for NT 4.)
Windows XP was 5.1.
Server 2003 was 5.2.
I certainly wouldn't call 2003/XP service packs to 2000.
Oh no! I will have to wait a whole two years? Goodness me! I'm not sure how I'm going to cope with that. No new wonderful version of Windows from Microsoft. All those previous releases have filled my life with joy. Have brought wonderful productivity leaps to my working life. Have left me full of optimism. No bugs, no problems. Well built, high quality software, satisfying to work with. And good value too - I would love to pay for the same thing again and again. I can't live another two years without the next amazing iteration of this great OS. Please Microsoft. Hurry up. We can't wait that long!
Oh wait - has anybody seen my Linux laptop, I need to connect to my Linux servers to find out why is everything working ok and there are no unexplained crashes and constant updates that brake things. That is unacceptable!
when it was released XP was viewed as a bit of a pointless upgrade too, it wasn't enough of a change from 2000 to really justify. 3 service packs later, and the differences are clear, but only because 2000 stopped being improved.
There has to be an actual reason to upgrade versions, rather than an artificially created one, xp to vista technically did have a reason, there was significant rework of the core driver model, and enough other change to justify calling it a new version. It had issues when released but it was being honed. For marketing reasons though, it was polished into 7 rather than just upgraded as a service pack.
8 may again be a significant enough change to justify being called a new version, but experience says wait until it's actually finished and re-released as 9.
Steal a BSD core, spunk your own UI onto its upturned stack, and declare a native binary do-ever.
While Microsoft would never break backwards compatibility (deliberately anyway), they could use WINE (or steal-and-rewrite it) to run legacy Win32 binaries.
THAT would be risky.
However, what I expect we'll see is an "8!" sticker on Windows 7 SP 3, with - at most - the long threatened WinFS file system. Plus, of course, new versions of DevStudio / Outlook / Office with binary format extensions that can't be read by Office 2010. Plus ca change.