Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/08/windows_7_2009/
Microsoft: Windows 7 ready for Christmas 2009
Fill your stockings
By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco
Posted in Operating Systems, 8th November 2008 00:22 GMT
Windows 7 in time for Christmas? No, not this Christmas - but Christmas 2009.
Microsoft has reportedly (
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10084486-56.html) told PC and systems engineering partners Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista, will be on PCs in time for the next holiday season.
That contradicts Microsoft's official party line that Windows 7 would not ship until 2010, three years after Windows Vista received its official launch.
The holiday buying season typically refers to six weeks between US Thanksgiving and the New Year.
If Microsoft is correct, and if this isn't a piece of outdated PowerPoint carrying an old ship date, that could mean OEMs getting Windows 7 by September 2009 at the latest to hit the holiday shopping season.
Microsoft's last big success was Windows XP, which launched in late October 2001, in time for that year's holiday shopping season. Windows XP had been put in the hands of OEM with a release to manufacturing two months earlier, in August that year.
All about Microsoft (
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1706) blogger, and fellow MicroBite (
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/07/microbite_2/) co-host, Mary-Jo Foley said (
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/) the whisper around the Windows camp fire is there'll be a Windows 7 beta the week before this Christmas, with the release candidate released in either the first or second quarter of 2009.
Why so fast on Windows 7? Microsoft is keeping the operating system simple and cutting any features aren't working and that might mutate into delays if work on them continues, based on what The Reg heard at last week's Professional Developers' Conference (PDC). ®
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10080700-75.html?tag=txt
November 1, 2008 11:46 AM PDT
Windows 7 pre-beta hits BitTorrent
Posted by Suzanne Tindal
The pre-beta version of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system released to developers at the Professional Developers Conference has already made it onto prominent BitTorrent sites, where thousands of enthusiasts around the world are currently downloading it.
Well-known BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova were at the time of publication Friday hosting multiple downloads of the newly aired operating system--both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
On The Pirate Bay, one copy of the 32-bit build had more than one thousand people uploading it, and almost 7,000 people on the way to downloading it. The 64-bit version was less popular, with the earliest copy available on the site having only around 100 people hosting a copy and around a thousand still downloading it.
There were complaints that the version offered wasn't the latest build, but instead the stable one given the delegates and therefore didn't have the revised taskbar. Complaints also abounded about how slow the download was considering the lack of people seeding the file.
The most popular link for the 32-bit version of Windows 7 on Mininova had a similar number of people downloading and uploading the file as that on The Pirate Bay, although the 64-bit version on this site was a rare breed with only one copy boasting 30 seeds and around 150 leechers.
Some people weren't excited. "There is nothing (sic) new in it," wrote one commenter. "I wouldn't recommend this to download. Waste of time. Happy with Vista."
Others called for a reality check. "Seriously people. This was just a PRE-beta release that was given out at a trade show so writers would write about the new version. This SHOULD NOT be downloaded with the intent of using it as an everyday system. It is just so writers could get a feel for what was to come."
Businesses might wonder what the new operating system will mean for their business. "I was in Redmond three weeks ago and had a sneak peek," said Peter Menadue, who holds the role of global director of solutions and technology, Microsoft solutions business within systems integrator Dimension Data.
"I think they've done a stellar job. Sinofsky's a genius," he added, referring to Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of the Windows and Windows Live engineering group.
He said that what didn't come out in the press coverage about Windows 7 were all the bits of the operating system that would be interesting to enterprise, with aspects like application security, data security, and application deployment getting a facelift.
The support for virtualization was something Menadue flagged as being of interest to business, as well as Microsoft's pledge to maintain application and driver compatibility with Vista.
Dimension Data will get the M3 code for Windows 7 before the end of the year, which will allow it to start an early deployment program internally.
Menadue said there had been a lot of interest in the operating system because there had been much less information than there was on previous releases, with Microsoft carefully controlling what reached the press, but added that with the current climate, companies were focused "on the here and now."
These comments were echoed by Jo Sweeney, adviser at analyst firm Intelligent Business Research Services. "What tends to happen (in times like these) is that IT professionals get much more focused on proving and not improving," he said. "People will (move to) Windows 7 because if they can put greater management features into it, it will solve some of the problems of desktop computing."
More than 80 percent of IT costs go into the day-to-day running of IT, Sweeney said--keeping all the PCs running, making sure everyone has the right patches--and Microsoft's dynamic IT strategy, in which Windows 7 is a part, will make that easier by allowing the separation of applications and user profiles from the operating system. This will allow anyone anywhere on the network to access their profile.
People doing best-practice desktop management will already have realized those improvements, Sweeney said, with Microsoft's direction being a reaction to the market, although he admitted it was a good one. "How do they execute?" he asked. "Question mark."
Suzanne Tindal reported for ZDNet Australia.
