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Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Timelines Shared at Computex [microsoft.com]Today during a keynote address at Computex 2009 in Taipei, Microsoft’s OEM Division Corporate Vice President Steve Guggenheimer revealed that the company is confident with the progress made with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and that as a result, Microsoft will deliver Release to Manufacturing (RTM) code to partners in the second half of July. Windows 7 will become generally available on Oct. 22, 2009, and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be broadly available at the same time.
“As we’ve said many times, quality is our primary goal,” Guggenheimer said. “We announce each milestone once we’re confident of where we are in the development cycle and that it is ready to be shared with customers and partners. We’ve received great feedback from our partners who are looking forward to offering Windows 7 to their customers in time for the holidays.”
Sadly, it's legacy will nag at harried IT managers and PC service technicians for a decade to come, like other "forgotten" OSes. But just like its predecessors, no one will shed a tear as the rickety raft on which it sails diminishes in the distance into the fog and setting sun.
wow grelmar you should be a writer looks like you have the nack.
His first draft read: DIE, DIE, DIE Vista, DIE!"
DIE, DIE, DIE Vista, DIE!"
[edited by: Future at 9:18 pm (utc) on June 3, 2009]
I'm well aware that Vista isn't everyone's favorite OS, but you'll be happy to know that the Windows 7 kernel is taken directly from Vista. wink
Well aware. And it's all still based on the NT kernel. The key difference being NT actually, you know, worked.
Vista was a grand public Beta for Win 7. And the public even footed the bill. How nice of them.
I'm still waiting for the new relational database based file system (WinFS) that was supposed to be included with Vista, then Server 2008 (aka "Longhorn" by MS PR people, "Shorthorn" by critics who noted a definite lack of anything significantly new), then Windows 7... And now if you ask a MS PR flack about it, they just nod and smile and say "What new files system?"
I meant this one [en.wikipedia.org].
Oh wait, that was based RFS circa 2000(ish) which never materialized... Which was based on CAIRO, which was based on OFS...
Ok... I'm losing my hope of expecting much from Windows 7. I mean, this is a company that's been fiddling and twiddling on the same "new" file system for 20 years and still hasn't released it yet.
At least 7 doesn't have all those annoying widgets and notifications up the wazoo enabled by default. (At least the beta version didn't... Maybe in yet another grand stroke of MS "genius" they'll activate it all again right before they ship the infamous "Gold" DVDs to the OEMs.)
I bought the machines for the hardware spec at the price and acers are quiet ..vista 64 will only be used to run 3D apps ..Maya, Maya etc
One also wonders how they what security/wga system they are going to ship 7 with ...and how simple it will be to get around ..and how much chaos that will cause for the genuine buyers who find their OEM VLK's on the blacklist at tech support Redmond ..( and if they will have fixed the vital parts of the installed support/help files / messages in eng only )..no matter what your local language version of the OS is ..problem .
[edited by: Leosghost at 10:05 am (utc) on June 4, 2009]
Will Windows 7 suck?
I have an average machine with an average allotment of memory, an average CPU. I bought it pre-installed with Vista, because no alternative was offered.
It is BRUTAL with Vista. blah blah blah, you've heard it all before. It idles at 80%, with nothing open and nothing running. Compare that to the machine I'm on right now, running XP, and my CPU is at 4%. and I have a dozen heavy apps running full throttle.
Will the suffering finally end, this October?
CentOS uses the least resources at idle, then Windows 7, then Ubuntu, then XP, with Vista being a hog.
httpwebwitch, what OEM did you get? Dell and HP for example add a bunch of their own crap which makes Windows even worse. I typically build my own machines or format whatever machine I get, buy a retail copy of Windows and install it fresh. Makes a huge difference!
Windows 7 will be in my opinion Window's best chance at redemption as it'll be much better than Vista and even better than XP.
Side note: I haven't had Vista crash since SP1 although it is a resource hog compared to XP or Linux.
Windows 7 is Vista 2.0. At least it won't be a nightmare with regards to updated device drivers.
Wouldn't this depend on when you bought your hardware?
I have no personal experience with Vista, but I've heard a lot of complaints from friends and technicians about it, a fair amount having to do with device drivers.
What's the status on "legacy" devices? Have the manufacturers done their part by now, or is there a chance I'll have to replace a bunch of expensive peripherals... things like heavy duty printers and scanners that work fine on XP... if I move to Windows 7?
Windows 7 is Vista 2.0
[pre]
Windows 2000 : Version 5.0
Windows XP : Version 5.1
Windows Vista : Version 6.0
Windows 7 : Version 6.1
[/pre]Also, it's perhaps worth noting one of the tricks used to force people to upgrade from NT4 to 2000 - MS refused to add USB support to NT4 saying it was incompatible. However, an independent developer added support for flash drives thereby exposing that as a lie. (He later sold his website with many useful utilities to Microsoft.)
Kaled.
This is borne out by my own experience of KDE and XFCE.
httpwebwitch, if it makes you suffer, can you not use another OS?
I have old printers and scanners that won't work with Vista yet. You'll want to look into the compatibility issue.
Thanks. Actually, it was something I didn't really want to look at, but it's good to understand that's what needs to be done.
Here's the Windows Vista Compatibility Center [microsoft.com]. It's pretty well organized, but I'd use site search rather than browsing to find a specific product. The huge number of products from each manufacturer suggests why ongoing support is so difficult.
Eventually, you'll get a link to a driver page on manufacturer's site. With luck, it might be the appropriate page. One of my scanner manufacturers seems to send me on an endless loop, where the purported Vista driver link for a scanner sends me to an old page that doesn't list any Vista drivers. Etc.
It's only time and money. Sigh....
It's when you have the 64 bit version of the OS that driver support is a bit more sketchy.
Yes, I was noticing. I gather the 64-bit version of Windows 7 doesn't have a mode to support 32-bit drivers.
A question is whether I really need 64-bit. I suppose if I were doing some major video editing, it would come in handy... and maybe I might want it for Photoshop or Lightroom.
I don't see an easy upgrade path if I wanted to do it gradually.
I gather the 64-bit version of Windows 7 doesn't have a mode to support 32-bit drivers.
easy upgrade path
I gather the 64-bit version of Windows 7 doesn't have a mode to support 32-bit drivers
One of the support engineers does say "Windows 7 XP Mode is an updated version of Virtual PC that includes a pre-configured version of 32bit Windows XP."
