Windows 7 is really Vista 2
That’s the contention of Ed Bott. He makes a good case that Windows 7 will not be a complete overhaul but more like an upgraded Vista. He argues for something like Windows 98 compared with Windows 95. Bott gives some statistics to make a case that Microsoft tends to take around 1000 days after the release of a new operating system before it finally gets it right. He concludes:
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.