Windows 7, Coming Soon?

For those looking for what’s next after Vista, Windows 7 may arrive sooner than you think.

Bill Gates recently spoke at Inter-American Development Bank, which is the main source of multilateral financing for economic, social and institutional development in Latin America and the Caribbean (source: IDB).

During his talk, Bill had lots of good things to say about health and education in Latin America. He discussed how important education is in combating disease and necessary for sustainable health care. Since leaving Microsoft’s CEO post in 2000, I think Bill is doing some very important work in the world and should be commended for it.

For an overview of Bill’s talk on Latin America healthcare and education please see this.

Bill also touched on something I never fully appreciated until Google really took off: The U.S. Model where universities retain licensing rights to new technologies developed on-campus, and even through government funds.

Side Note regarding Standford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.  Not too long ago, Sergey and Larry were grad students at Stanford where they developed the logic, algorithm and patents to Google. Compared to where I attended university, Stanford really thrives on encouraging students and facality to develop and market new technologies. The school also connects developers of new technology with financing sources, which encourages new partnerships, patents and licensing.  In short, Stanford transparently creates new technologies, where the students, facility, school and world come out ahead.

Back to Windows 7 speculation. Much to Microsoft’s chagrin, Windows Vista is not achieving large scale penetration in the business market.  Although consumer adoption appears pretty strong, most of this is on new consumer PCs, where the user typically chooses between Vista and Vista (hmm… not much choice there).  In any event, Microsoft releases a new version of Windows every 3 to 5 years.  Vista took 5 years to ship, and Microsoft is vowing to ship the next version in only three years.   Adding three to Vista debut of January 2007, slates a Windows 7 ETA of January 2010.  But after hearing Bill’s words at IDB, Windows may arrive sooner.  We’ll see.

For Bills’ comments on Windows 7, please click here.

Windows 7

Depending on what you’ve read or experienced: Windows Vista is really great, really bad, or somewhere in between. For the most part, I’m not too excited about Vista. I think there are a bunch of technological improvements, and lots of potential, but overall I’m just not terribly impressed with the completed product. To say the least, I think some major polish and serious optimization are needed. I’ve heard some other people feel the same way.

This brings us to Windows 7, which is the the next version of Windows. There is a lot of Windows 7 speculation out in the wild. But, there’s not much in the way of official information, or even anything possibly concrete. Microsoft really doesn’t like to release official feature lists, or product information until they are sure they can deliver. That’s really no different than most software companies. What is different, is Windows is not just any software, and Microsoft is not just any software company. So, Microsoft has extra incentive to keep tight-lipped until they are actually ready to present something. Microsoft doesn’t like bad press about features they cut, and I don’t blame them.

In the meantime, we’ll have to settle for good old fashioned speculation… In fact, when I was a boy we didn’t even have the internet, all we had was speculation. How times have changed. Now in this modern day, when hard facts are unavailable, we can speculate en mass!

Hopefully, some Microsoft insider will be willing to drop an opinion here and there (sort of like MiniMicrosoft). Hey, perhaps one has. I’ve recently come across an interesting blog on Windows 7. By outward appearances, this appears to be written by an insider. I hope that over the coming months, this blog continues to increase in relevance. I do like information, and I’m quietly cheering for a much improved version of Windows: Shipping Seven (Random thoughts from somebody working on the next Windows OS)