It's time to turn our attention to the next Windows client release, Windows 7. (Microsoft had used other code-names, like "Vienna" and "Windows Seven," to describe this product in the past.) Like Vienna, Windows 7 was originally just a codename. But Microsoft announced in October 2008 that they would use Windows 7 as the final name of the product.
Windows Vista was a major release, and Microsoft is positioning Windows 7 as a major release as well. However, the language Microsoft uses to describe the technical underpinnings of the Windows 7 suggest that this product will in fact be a minor release, or what the Windows Server team would have called an interim, or R2 ("release 2") release. Microsoft corporate vice president Steven Sinofsky described it this way: "[We are not going to] introduce additional [in]compatibilities, particularly in the driver model. Windows Vista was about improving those things ... Memory management, networking, process management, all of the security hardening, all of those things will carry forth, and maintain the compatibility with applications that people expect. Windows Vista established a very solid foundation, a multiyear foundation, particularly on subsystems like graphics and audio and storage and things like that, and Windows 7--and then Windows Server 2008 built on that foundation, and Windows 7 will continue to build on that foundation as well."
I've been saying for over a year now, Windows Vista wasn't as horrible as people had heard. Indeed, for the first year of that OS's existence, Microsoft was largely silient, and it wasn't until the software giant fixed the few real problems with Vista in Service Pack 1 that the company finally turned its attention to marketing the fact that, yes, Windows Vista was actually quite good. Efforts like the Mojave Project, and the "I'm a PC" ad campaign did a lot to overturn Vista's bad PR, and presumably Windows 7 will finally put all that nonsense to rest for good.
I loaded Windows 7 RC last night and am writing this on my Windows 7 Laptop. At first glance it apears much like Vista with some noteable exceptions. one being a taskbar which without the start button, looks alot like a Mac taskbar at the bottom of screen. More on this next time with screen shoots.