Microsoft is NOT planning to release Windows 7 in 2009

[jokeripa]

No, we have Windows Vista. XP is an outdated operating system.

Lmao, think before you speak.

How can an operating system, which still has a major update to come be outdated?

All my programs work on XP... and I can use more of my resources on a project, without it being drained somewhere trying to make it look pretty or something.

I mean... my friends sister bought a recently laptop, which came pre-installed with Vista. 2GB Ram, Core2Duo can't remember the speed. And Vista, without any actual programs running except Explorer was laggy as hell.

Why waste extra resources?

[XPero]

Windows Seven will be a polished version of Vista, so you XP lovers will not like it either.

[ViperAFK]

I'm going to install windows 98 on my computer because it uses less resources than XP.

@ disturb3d it was probably all the **** the OEM preinstalled on the laptop. I usually format oem computers when i get them because whether it's XP or vista all the preinstalled junk slows it to a crawl.

[spenser.d]

1 single poor display driver was shipped, which would be remedied with a driver update, and that resulted in MS moving the display driver from the kernel back into userland? I'd say that was more of a quality control issue, either WHQL or whatnot, more than anything else.

I'm not saying moving it was a terrible idea. I'm just simply trying to point out Vista != better performance over XP in some pretty significant areas because of some of the core changes made to Vista even if you have the latest and greatest hardware.

By 'single display driver', I believe he meant something along the lines of ATI Radeon class drivers (or a specific set of Nvidia drivers), which ATI or Nvidia doesn't ever update for reliability and the driver set keeps causing BSOD's on systems no matter which version of the driver you have.

That'd be a pretty big deal.

-Spenser

[abcdefg]

a ridiculous percentage of BSODs reported through Watson from Windows XP systems

Any public statistics (public doesn't mean tampered) of BSOD reasons in XP?

Maybe that would put the blame on those who deserves it. Or maybe that's the reason they are not public. :rolleyes:

[ViperAFK]

I actually had my nvidia driver crash in vista once, it did just pop up and say "The display driver has crashed and has been recovered" A hell alot better then getting a BSOD thrown at you. Any driver can possibly crash due to many different circumstances, whether it be the driver, the program/game/ or the os. I think they made a good move moving the driver into userspace.

And to people saying vista just wastes ram and sit there staring at their task manager or something, Vista's memory management is much different than XP, and on a computer with a lot of ram (@+ gb) It will improve performance of launching programs ect... And if applications need the memory it will free it up, it is much more intelligent than the more primitive prefetch XP uses.

[Linkinfamous]

Actually, what I find odd is Vista's DWM uses more system memory when DWM/Glass is enabled? I thought the opposite should occur in that Vista should allocate more resources to the graphic card's memory rather than using more system memory but apparently that's not how MS designed DWM so in reality, bl4ck5un is right in that more system memory/RAM is being used when DWM/Glass is enabled.

The DWM has to keep a full bitmap copy of every window in memory.

Vista offers no "extra" functionality for businesses IMO

It has a lot of features that IT people should be drooling over:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_fe...o_Windows_Vista

[rpgfan]

Windows Seven will be a polished version of Vista, so you XP lovers will not like it either.

Actually, I think I'll check out Windows 7 for a single reason - the creation of the tiny MinWin kernel. I can't stand Vista, and it isn't the UI changes or anything that some people say ward them off; it is the resources that Vista (32-bit) uses compared to XP (32-bit). I can't say the same for the 64-bit versions because I haven't tried them, but the 32-bit version of Vista makes my notebook crawl, and that's only Vista Home Basic. XP MCE, on the other hand, is much faster. That's just my experience, however...

And as for the topic itself, I hope MS does release it in 2009, but if not, I won't be crying. I'll still have Linux, and when I need to game on Windows, XP SP3 will suffice since the support extends out to 2014. That should be plenty of time to figure out whether Windows 7 is a bad thing or not. :)

[roadgeek9]

How did I not know that Windows "7" was going to be delayed? :woot:

It took 6 years to develop Windows Vista, with an original claim to be released in late 2003 or early 2004, but instead was released in January 2007, and still has kept some users (including myself) running Windows XP. It wouldn't surprise me if Windows "7" was released by 2012.

[spenser.d]

How did I not know that Windows "7" was going to be delayed? :woot:

It took 6 years to develop Windows Vista, with an original claim to be released in late 2003 or early 2004, but instead was released in January 2007, and still has kept some users (including myself) running Windows XP. It wouldn't surprise me if Windows "7" was released by 2012.

What do you mean delayed? Windows 7 has never had a release date or even a timeframe (at least none released to the general public). Everything you've heard about 2009 has been speculation.

-Spenser

[roadgeek9]

What do you mean delayed? Windows 7 has never had a release date or even a timeframe (at least none released to the general public). Everything you've heard about 2009 has been speculation.

-Spenser

Neowin has told me LIES! I thought you all knew what you were talking about!

Actually, I am not flaming at Neowin, I am flaming at Tech News sites that have claimed that Windows "7" would be released in 2009.

[FATILA]

Actually, I think I'll check out Windows 7 for a single reason - the creation of the tiny MinWin kernel. I can't stand Vista, and it isn't the UI changes or anything that some people say ward them off; it is the resources that Vista (32-bit) uses compared to XP (32-bit). I can't say the same for the 64-bit versions because I haven't tried them, but the 32-bit version of Vista makes my notebook crawl, and that's only Vista Home Basic. XP MCE, on the other hand, is much faster. That's just my experience, however...

And as for the topic itself, I hope MS does release it in 2009, but if not, I won't be crying. I'll still have Linux, and when I need to game on Windows, XP SP3 will suffice since the support extends out to 2014. That should be plenty of time to figure out whether Windows 7 is a bad thing or not. :)

Unless hell freezes over W7 will take up more resources than Vista, you don't generally add new features and take advantage of emerging technologies and at the same time use less of the system than before (and the minwin thing is just pure speculation at this point, as in it will make any difference, and is not heavily in windows already).

I am not sure where people have heard things like "completely new GUI" "rewritten from scratch" and "less resource intensive/smaller than Vista" from, but I have certainly not heard those as facts from Microsoft (or even likely events for that matter).

[episode]

Don't force your opinions on me. :ermm:

I prefer to utilize my RAM not have it hogged by UI.

He didn't state an opinion. XP is outdated. Vista is the current OS.

Whether you use it or not is your business (I use XP) but XP being outdated is fact.

[coolvi]

LOL I love this. It's like "my iPod Touch is better than your iPod Video, EAT THAT."

[theyarecomingforyou]

How did I not know that Windows "7" was going to be delayed? :woot:

It took 6 years to develop Windows Vista, with an original claim to be released in late 2003 or early 2004, but instead was released in January 2007, and still has kept some users (including myself) running Windows XP. It wouldn't surprise me if Windows "7" was released by 2012.

Actually, the interview stated they were expecting development to take about 3 years from Vista's launch - that means a late 2009 release date is still on the table and there is no "delay". It simply rules out the 2008 rumour. By all means shout off your mouth once a delay has actually been announced but you were wrong to do so on this occasion.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

1 single poor display driver was shipped, which would be remedied with a driver update, and that resulted in MS moving the display driver from the kernel back into userland? I'd say that was more of a quality control issue, either WHQL or whatnot, more than anything else.

I'm not saying moving it was a terrible idea. I'm just simply trying to point out Vista != better performance over XP in some pretty significant areas because of some of the core changes made to Vista even if you have the latest and greatest hardware.

You are confused. I was not talking about a specific version of a driver. Yes it's a quality control issue to some extent, but it's not Microsoft's quality issue. And we don't get to block drivers (or anything else) from loading just because they're known to crash, unfortunately.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Crossing the user-kernel level boundary is costly. If the user mode driver interacts a lot with the kernel, that's one point where performance losses are introduced.

The WDDM architecture is actually quite efficient, and the reduced GDI performance has nothing to do with crossing the user/kernel boundary. It's simply that hardware acceleration for certain GDI drawing functions (i think it's mainly stretchblt, scaling, a couple others - though I don't actually know for sure) are no longer processed by the 2D capabilities of the graphics card, and are instead processed by the CPU. Jlike they were before Windows 2000 and before drivers that accelerated GDI/GDI+.

The only case where you'll notice any significant difference would probably be something like Stardock's WindowFX program, which as I recall made heavy use of GDI acceleration to do its window transition animations.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in Vista, doesn't GDI draw to a texture (bitmap, whatever) which is then copied onto a DirectX surface, which is then composited? There's nothing wrong with doing that (and it shouldn't cause a 70% slowdown, that would probably be something else)

Yes, if the DWM is running, the client area of every window is drawn to an off-screen buffer and then composited onto the desktop. This is a seperate issue from the lack of GDI acceleration.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Vista offers no "extra" functionality for businesses IMO, therefore XP is not an outdated operating system. The major thing Vista offers is DirectX 10. Everything else isn't needed IMO, and something that most people won't ever take advantage of.

Well that's just silly. Vista offers countless business-specific features and that's partly why so many enterprise customers are moving very quickly to deploy it. I know of several very, very large companies that never deployed Windows XP (stuck with Windows 2000) but are already rolling out Vista or will be very soon.

They love the LUA improvements, the deployment and manageability improvements, things like Bitlocker, better smart card / SUA support, more secure RDP, more control over network / wireless configurations, integrated search. I saw a presentation from a huge enterprise's head IT guy recently who mentioned that the customizeable metadata-editing capabilities of the Open/Save dialog were a big deal for them.

There are also huge improvements to client-side caching (offline files), which is another key selling point for businesses. And these are just the things that I thought of while writing this, I know there are others too.

Believe me, businesses have plenty of reason to move to Vista.

[Swift33]

You are confused. I was not talking about a specific version of a driver. Yes it's a quality control issue to some extent, but it's not Microsoft's quality issue. And we don't get to block drivers (or anything else) from loading just because they're known to crash, unfortunately.

Ah sorry, that's the impression I got since you mentioned "one specific video driver" which I assumed meant one version/update out of all the drivers the company has released.

Anyway, are you saying drivers don't get blocked by MS from being WHQL certified even if they crash and cause whole system BSODs? If so, that's a very odd shortcoming for the WHQL program since companies are being given the seal of approval by MS via MS certifying the drivers with a digital signature. I'm not really talking about all the drivers a company were to put up on their site, the betas and the non-WHQL ones, just really the WHQL ones which would be used by the large majority of people and would in theory be the best of the drivers offered by a company. Those WHQL drivers after all are put up on WU sometimes as well.

WHQL is there for a reason. If people load a driver that is WHQL certified, then they assume that the driver has gotten far more testing into it to match a certain quality level and would not be prone to some of the issues in regular non-WHQL or beta ones.

If that ("that" is referring to what I was talking about in the first sentence of my second paragrah) isn't the case and the drivers do get blocked from being WHQL certified if they cause those system issues, then how can a whole class of drivers that have been WHQL certified be causing those issues because again, WHQL drivers is what the vast majority of people will load/use.

Edited January 27, 2008 by Swift33

[Swift33]

Actually, what I find odd is Vista's DWM uses more system memory when DWM/Glass is enabled? I thought the opposite should occur in that Vista should allocate more resources to the graphic card's memory rather than using more system memory but apparently that's not how MS designed DWM so in reality, bl4ck5un is right in that more system memory/RAM is being used when DWM/Glass is enabled.

The DWM has to keep a full bitmap copy of every window in memory.

And, also from Wikipedia:

With DWM running, applications do not draw directly to the video memory, but to an off-screen buffers in system memory that are then composited together by DWM to render the final screen, a number of times per second.

So DWM/Glass does in fact use more system memory and doesn't take advantage of the video memory thereby lowering the amount of free system resources available for the user to make use of. Even if the amount of memory used by DWM is small for some people or huge for others, those are just the simple facts that it does lower the amount of free system memory.

Edited January 27, 2008 by Colin-uk

[Hell_Of_Doom]

1. It's almost 7 years old.

2. I didn't say there was anything revolutionary about Vista. There was nothing revolutionary about XP either.

3. Vista runs faster than XP on modern machines. If you don't HAVE a modern machine, stick with XP until MS stops mainstream support for it next year.

4. The majority of people's complaints with Vista (slow file transfer speed, low performance, no drivers, etc) are also outdated. The file transfer issue has been fixed by Microsoft, and virtually all hardware that isn't 3-4 years old now has Vista drivers. My wireless network card is over 2 years old and has Vista support, and my 2 year old printer also has a Vista driver. Performance has also been much better for me in Vista than XP.

It's not true that Vista runs faster then XP. Apps and Games under Vista even written for Vista are still slower then under XP. Maybe XP is 7 years old but it was revolutionary OS better say Windows 2000 and XP like extended Windows 2000 OS. In fact Vista is not revolutionary at all. XP deals with newer hardware perfectly fine, and the modern hardware running on XP is designed with XP as well as with Vista in mind. The bottom line is XP is not outdated OS at all, but in its peak after hardware and software is released we use today for what actually XP was designed 7 years ago.

Going from Windows 98 to Windows 2000/Windows XP was revolutionary and much bigger difference then from XP to Vista which is just evolutionary step built on XP, or better say Windows 2003 Server R2 code.

[Swift33]

To Brandon and to anyone else that may reply: Do note that I am not making the opinion that Vista is in any way a completely bad product with my comments. I'm just trying to point out some of Vista's shortcomings, performance wise, resource-usage wise, which are the result of changes MS made to the core of Vista that seem to not benefit the vast majority of users (even if drivers caused BSODs for some people in XP, I highly doubt it would be a huge majority of people and isn't that what WHQL is for, to root out the bad drivers from the good and to let companies know what they need to work on/fix for newer versions to get WHQL certified instead of going through all the work of decreasing performance by moving the display driver from the kernel to userland?).

[Slimy]

Vista offers no "extra" functionality for businesses IMO, therefore XP is not an outdated operating system. The major thing Vista offers is DirectX 10. Everything else isn't needed IMO, and something that most people won't ever take advantage of.

What "extra functionality" did XP offer for businesses over Windows 2000?

Ever heard of security? I'm sure businesses care about that. DirectX is not the only major thing Vista does better than XP.

[Swift33]

What exactly did XP offer for businesses over Windows 2000?

2000 wasn't outdated when XP came out while some people are trying to say that XP is old, it's done for, it's a dead product a year after Vista came out. That simply is not true. People continued to use Win 2000 for many years after XP came out. XP however brought consumers and businesses under 1 stable codebase, a significant move for MS. XP also brought major security improvements over Win 2000 (most with XP SP2). Even Win 2000 is being used by some businesses today and continues to get security updates from MS because of the extended support until 2010. XP will get security updates until 2014 because of the extended support.

[oceanmotion]

Is it not really obvious to anyone else that they will release Windows 7 in their 25th Anniversey year. Likely the fall of that year which is 2010, that would be perfect timing and what a way to take Windows to the next step and come out with a bang on such a celebration. You couldn't plan it any better. Vista has put some great groundwork in with security, network etc. They could pull this off well with Windows 7 for a Fall 2010 release.