NewsDude
07-01-2008, 02:20 PM
Microsoft Windows has put on a lot of weight over the years.
Beginning as a thin veneer for older software code, it has become an obese monolith built on an ancient frame. Adding features, plugging security holes, fixing bugs, fixing the fixes that never worked properly, all while maintaining compatibility with older software and hardware -- is there anything Windows does not try to do?
Painfully visible are the inherent design deficiencies of a foundation that was never intended to support such weight.
The best solution to the multiple woes of Windows is starting over. Completely. Now.
Vista is the equivalent, at a minimum, of Windows version 12. After six years of development, the longest interval between versions in the previous 22-year history of Windows, and long enough to permit Apple to bring out three new versions of Mac OS X, Vista was introduced to consumers in January 2007. When IT professionals and consumers got a look at Vista, they all had this same question for Microsoft: That's it?
Just after Vista's birth, Kevin Kutz, a manager at Microsoft, issued a cranky statement in February 2007, "In Response to Speculation on Next Version of Windows," announcing that the company could not say anything about post-Vista Windows "other than that we're working on it."
The internal code name for the next version is Windows 7. The 7 refers to nothing in particular, a company spokeswoman says. This version is supposed to arrive in or around early 2010.
Will it be a top-to-bottom rewrite? Last week, Bill Veghte, a Microsoft senior vice president, sent a letter to customers reassuring them there would be minimal changes to Windows' essential code.
But sticking with that same core architecture is the problem, not the solution. In April, Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald, analysts at Gartner, a research firm, presented...
More... (http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=60539)
Beginning as a thin veneer for older software code, it has become an obese monolith built on an ancient frame. Adding features, plugging security holes, fixing bugs, fixing the fixes that never worked properly, all while maintaining compatibility with older software and hardware -- is there anything Windows does not try to do?
Painfully visible are the inherent design deficiencies of a foundation that was never intended to support such weight.
The best solution to the multiple woes of Windows is starting over. Completely. Now.
Vista is the equivalent, at a minimum, of Windows version 12. After six years of development, the longest interval between versions in the previous 22-year history of Windows, and long enough to permit Apple to bring out three new versions of Mac OS X, Vista was introduced to consumers in January 2007. When IT professionals and consumers got a look at Vista, they all had this same question for Microsoft: That's it?
Just after Vista's birth, Kevin Kutz, a manager at Microsoft, issued a cranky statement in February 2007, "In Response to Speculation on Next Version of Windows," announcing that the company could not say anything about post-Vista Windows "other than that we're working on it."
The internal code name for the next version is Windows 7. The 7 refers to nothing in particular, a company spokeswoman says. This version is supposed to arrive in or around early 2010.
Will it be a top-to-bottom rewrite? Last week, Bill Veghte, a Microsoft senior vice president, sent a letter to customers reassuring them there would be minimal changes to Windows' essential code.
But sticking with that same core architecture is the problem, not the solution. In April, Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald, analysts at Gartner, a research firm, presented...
More... (http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=60539)