Windows 7 in a year? Not Likely.
If you’ve been keeping up with the current events you may have noticed a quote taken from Bill Gates this past week where he stated - “Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version [of Windows],”. Nearly overnight only in an internet of chaos has the totally vague comment manifested into an apparent product announcement from Microsoft.
According to Ars Technica (and anyone in the right mind) by using common knowledge of Microsoft’s release history and understanding what goes into a big software release such as the next version of Windows, there is no way we will see a Windows 7 release within a feasible feature as it’s being reported by the big media sources and much of the blogosphere. The comment was made at an annual developer conference in Miami where Microsoft also stated several times that Windows 7 is in planning stages and the development is slated to last at least 3 years from the general availability of Windows Vista.
To make a long story short, the article (which you can read here) concludes that Windows 7 could be in beta testing by 2009 but a retail release is more likely to be expected two or more years from now, not one.
Posted in: Articles, Microsoft, Software, Technology
April 7th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Remember longhorn? People we’re torrenting betas WAYYY before Vista was released, if the pattern is the same there should be some out Q4 2008.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I agree that there could be leaked beta’s of Windows 7 soon, in fact I’ve already seen screenshots posted around the internet of very early builds.
But there is a big difference in a beta and a copy on a store shelf and this comment Gates made is causing unwarranted panic and chaos about a release that isn’t going to happen for years.
April 9th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Just a little update on this, InformationWeek posted an article on Monday where Microsoft said that Windows 7 is projected to be released in 2010, not 2009.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207100040
April 11th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I hope there are beta’s soon. More than that I hope MS does AT LEAST two years of beta testing. The amount of code in operating systems has grown to the point that no matter how well designed, there will be bugs. Please MS get the beta out now wo we can have the product by the fall of 2010.