Given all the feedback that Microsoft has had from Vista users (both negative and positive), could Windows 7 be the best version of Windows yet?

Vista is turning out to be a bit of an enigma. While sales seem strong, users seem far from satisfied with the latest offering from Redmond. Also, while consumers and businesses alike have been eagerly waiting for SP1, it now seems that this won’t be enough to quell the constant flow of negativity. If it is true that Microsoft is pulling out the stops to get Windows 7 out of the door and onto PCs are fast as possible, this does seem to suggest that Microsoft is taking this negative feedback seriously and wants to put the Vista mistakes behind it.

If Microsoft has been listening to the feedback, the company will have a pretty good idea of what people thought was wrong with Vista, and this could give the project managers and developers a pretty blueprint for what the next version should be like.

Users disillusioned with Vista need a reason to give Microsoft a second chance.So, if Microsoft has been listening to the feedback, what will Windows 7 be like? Well, first off, Microsoft needs to trim the bloat out of the OS. While Vista can certainly be fast when you throw enough hardware at it, at the lower end of the hardware spectrum it’s hard not to start to see problems, and has the focus moves onto cheaper PCs, Microsoft needs to have a flexible platform that can accommodate a broad spectrum for PCs, from high-performance systems to cheap $200-$250 systems.

Secondly, Windows 7 needs to figure out the best way to leverage UAC or totally get rid of it. If you’re technically minded UAC shouldn’t be a problem, but if you’re not then that changes and you end up with an operating system that refuses to work the way you want it to.

Another stumbling block that Vista encountered was hardware and software compatibility. These issues have to be kept to a minimum in the next version if the new OS isn’t to attract the same level of criticism. Vendors have to be encouraged to develop drivers rather than expect home and business users to landfill things because of the lack of drivers.

Think about performance and you realize that the main competition that Vista has doesn’t come from Mac OS X or Linux, but from Windows XPThen we come onto performance. Think about performance and you realize that the main competition that Vista has doesn’t come from Mac OS X or Linux, but from Windows XP. Benchmark after benchmark shows that XP is capable of beating Vista hands down. Vista SP1 does little to address these issues while XP SP3 makes the old OS perform even better.

Another valid criticism of Vista is that of the UI. While the interface undoubtedly looks sexier, that pretty interface doesn’t translate into an interface that’s better or easier to use. In fact, many claim that the new interface is nowhere near as clear or as easy to use as that of XP. Just redesigning something to look different doesn’t automatically mean that it’s better.

And then there are the drivers. Microsoft is collecting more and more information about system crashes than ever but we’re still seeing drivers causing problems that they were causing a year ago. Either Microsoft isn’t using this information effectively or the information isn’t trickling down the chain fast enough to the vendors. Good drivers are key to a solid, robust and fast OS and so far the drivers that I’m coming across for Vista just aren’t up to scratch.

Then there are all the features that were dropped from Longhorn during its transformation into Vista. Aero’s not really a feature, and neither is security. Microsoft needs to get clear on the tangible benefits that Windows 7 will deliver early on and stick to them.

That’s just some of what Microsoft needs to deal with. Whether it will or not will decide what kind of feedback Windows 7 will get.

Thoughts?

Even with Windows Vista’s one-year anniversary launch just a week away, all that anyone in the tech-enthusiast community seems to want to talk about is Windows 7 (Except for those who are already sick of hearing about 7, as one Windows user characterized himself in a conversation I had yesterday.)

There are Windows 7 screen shots, Windows 7 videos, Windows 7-Windows Live-integration to-do lists. And of course, there is the infamous Milestone 1 (M1) Windows 7 build out there, with M2 and M3 successors due out later this year, if rumored roadmaps are to be believed.

Some pundits believe Microsoft is trying to stoke the Windows 7 fires to “build excitement” for its next Windows release. I don’t think this is the case at all. I think Microsoft wants to smother the Windows 7 flames and to dampen expectations as much as possible.

Because Microsoft won’t talk about Windows 7, I can’t quote any Microsoft representatives on what they are planning, thinking and hoping regarding Windows 7.

My opinion? The Softies want Windows 7 to be the anti-Vista. That is not a put-down of Vista, which may not be selling at two times the rate XP did — but which still is selling strongly enough to boost Microsoft’s Q2 FY 2008 client-division revenues by more almost 70 percent.

But Microsoft’s brass do want to avoid a lot of the pitfalls that it encountered with Windows Vista — and who can blame them? They want Windows 7 to be on-time, not polluted by feature-bloat and not overly ambitious. They want the Windows 7 betas to be near-feature-complete the first time that the majority of testers get builds. And most of all, they want Windows 7 to be a predictable, familiar, relatively minor upgrade. Should that take four years (counting from the fall 2006 Vista release-to-manufacturing date) to Microsoft’s stated 2010 Windows 7 ship target to deliver? Probably not; Windows 7 in 2009 looks like a realistic possibility.

All this is not to say the Softies won’t throw in a fun user-interface tweak and a couple nice-to-have improvements to keep Windows 7 from being a total yawn. That said, in the business market, a yawn is preferable to a bunch of incompatible drivers and apps….

But Microsoft is in a tricky spot. Apple can put consumers front and center when it designs a new operating system. But Microsoft needs to strike a balance between creating an operating system that appeals to both business users and consumers. If Microsoft only had to appease business users with Windows 7, a minor, no frills point-release update would be perfect. But it also has to fend off Mac OS X with Windows 7 on the retail front.

Can Microsoft make everyone happy with Windows 7? Should it even try? What would you do, if you were on the team that’s charged with “Shipping Seven”?

All the kerfuffle over Windows 7 - leaked memos, shaky handheld video clips of leaked builds, equally shaky tentative release schedules - is amusing. I don’t have any inside information to offer, only a perspective drawn from 17 years of watching the Windows development process in action.

The most common comment I’ve read lately is that Microsoft has accelerated the development schedule of Windows 7 in a desperate attempt to replace Windows Vista. Dave Methvin at Information Week argues that Windows 7 may mean Vista’s “early demise.” APC Mag speculates on the meaning of this “early release,” complete with a screenshot it calls “probably fake.” Randall Kennedy at InfoWorld piles onto the meme with this prediction:

Will Microsoft ship Windows 7 early in an effort to salvage its enterprise reputation? I’m guessing yes, if for no other reason than they can. It won’t take a major engineering effort to turn the ashes of Vista (which, despite its reputation, did incorporate some good ideas) into a solid OS that corporate IT actually wants.

All of those predictions miss one big point: There’s nothing “early” about the rumored H2 2009 release date of Windows 7. Last June, I argued that Windows Vista was the functional equivalent of Windows 95, with plenty of wrenching architectural changes that spelled pain for early adopters. Most of those problems were fixed with Windows 98. Likewise, despite the current love fest for XP, most people forget that its first years were plagued with bugs, driver hassles, and security problems (remember Blaster?) that weren’t stamped out until XP Service Pack 2.

Windows 7 is following perfectly in the footsteps of those two releases. I went and charted the history of Microsoft’s Windows releases from 1990 (Windows 3.0) forward, inserting Windows 7 into the mix with a September 30, 2009 release date, which is exactly midway into the second half of 2009. Each bar on the chart represents the number of days after the final release of the previous edition.

Let’s start with the history of Windows from the business side:



The biggest bar, of course, is Windows 2000, which went through the longest development cycle of any Microsoft operating system release ever. Windows XP was able to piggyback on that work with a release less than two years later. Getting SP2 out the door with major changes to the security subsystems took roughly 1000 days, and many people at Microsoft, including Steve Ballmer, wanted to give it the full release treatment, a decision that Windows boss Jim Allchin nixed. (See Mary Jo Foley’s October 2006 interview with Allchin for more details on this decision.)

Microsoft has a more complicated history when it comes to consumer versions of Windows, as this chart makes clear:


After Windows 98, Microsoft tried to cash in with two quick releases, Windows 98 Second Edition in 1999, and the ill-fated Windows Me in 2000. The business and consumer tracks were synched up for good with the release of Windows XP in October 2001.

What I found most fascinating about looking at this history is that the most stable and successful releases of Windows arrived roughly 1000 days after their trouble-plagued predecessors. Windows 98 arrived 1036 days after the original release of Windows 95. XP Service Pack 2 was released 1016 days after the launch of XP Home and Professional. And if those rumors are true, Windows 7 should arrive roughly 1000 days after Vista’s launch.

I certainly don’t expect any big changes in Windows 7. In fact, I’m willing to bet that one of its key design goals is that any driver or app written for Windows Vista must work perfectly on Windows 7. All of the compatibility and reliability fixes that have already gone into Windows Vista will be part of Windows 7 from day 1, making it much less likely that users will experience the sorts of headaches that early adopters experienced in the first six months after Vista’s release.

I expect to see Internet Explorer 8, a bunch of new digital media features, and some tweaking of User Account Control to make it less obtrusive. Mary Jo is right to call this “a smaller, more finite release,” not a big bang like Vista. Those who are predicting that Windows 7 will include some radically stripped-down kernel (the so-called MinWin project) or a new file system are missing the point completely.