Since April 7, 2008 when I wrote In a perfect Microsoft Wotrld - Windows 7 I have been suggesting that we would see the next version of Windows being releasesd at some point in late 2009. This goes contrary to the public line that Microsoft has been spinning in that it wouldn’t be available until some point in 2010.This stance has gotten them a lot of flack from just about all the Windows pundits with a few exceptions like Mary Jo Foley and Ed Bott. Both of them feel the same thing that I have been writing about in that Windows 7 will hit the shelves in late 2009.
Along those lines Mary Jo had a post today on her ZDNet blog letting us know that she has managed to get a look at the Milestone 3 interation of Windows 7. In the post she reports that the latest milestone release that is in the hands of a select few inside and outside of Microsoft. the only thing that I was wrong on from what I tell by reading the post was my hope that they would also be moving to a more modular type system for the operating system
From the quick glimpse I got of Milestone 3, it sounds like Bryant of AeroXperience.org was right on the money with his hypotheses about what’s changed in the latest internal test builds. The latest build seems quite stable. The Ribbon user interface from Office 2007 is now part of WordPad and Paint. Home Groups - the functionality formerly known in “Longhorn”/Vista as “Castle” - is part of the new Windows 7 build.
I also noticed that the “Graphical Console,- a k a PowerShell Version 2, seems to be part of the latest pre-release Windows 7 build.
(Looks like Stephen Chapman over at the UX Evangelist site got to see Build 6780, too, and has a lot more to say on Windows 7’s Paint and WordPad.)
From what admittedly little I had a chance to see, Windows 7 does not look or feel like a major departure from Windows Vista.
News like this firms up my opinion that Windows 7 will indeed see a release in time for the 2009 Christmas season and that before the end of this year we have a good chance of seeing one of the first betas being made available making it an early Christmas present for the more adventerous of us.
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