Although the time gap between XP and Vista"s release dates was more than five years, Microsoft is claiming it will be different this time around. At the RSA Conference in San Francisco, representatives said the software giant is planning for the next client operating system by the end of 2009. Vista shipped about two-and-a-half years after XP SP2, and Vista"s follow-up is expected to take about the same amount of time, according to Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of development with Microsoft"s Windows Core Operating System Division: "You can think roughly two, two-and-a-half years is a reasonable time frame that our partners can depend on and can work with. That"s a good timeframe for refresh."
Last year, Microsoft code named Vista"s successor as Vienna, but Fathi said he could not disclose the current name or what would be the major improvements in the release. "We"ve been told not to use it publicly. We"re going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don"t know what it is. Maybe it"s a new user interface paradigm for consumers. It"s too early for me to talk about it. But over the next few months I think you"re going to start hearing more and more."