I had hoped that Microsoft would take a role-based approach to Windows 7. But, there won"t be roles, according to a Saturday blog post by Steven Sinofsky, senior veep of the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group. He gave some pretty good reasons. In the post, Steven explains that customers well received Windows Server 2008"s role-based approach. "The desktop PC (or laptop) is different because there is only a single PC and the roles are not as well defined. Only in the rarest cases is that PC dedicated to a single purpose," Steven writes.
"In nearly every study we have ever done, just about every PC runs at least one piece of software that other people do not run," he continues. "So we should take away from this the difficulty in even labeling a PC as being role specific." Steven regards the PC for the unique device that it is. Most products are created to do one or two things. The PC is unusual in that it"s like a Swiss Army Knife that can do many things pretty well.