Microsoft Windows Vienna due in 2009
Microsoft are to release the follow up operating system to Vista, codenamed Vienna in late 2009. Remarkably this would be just over 2 years after the release of Vista. Quite strange you might say but let me explain.
Through conversations with a Microsoft insider, I was informed that all along Vista was supposed to be what Vienna will now be: a totally new operating system, not only in terms of looks, but in terms of how it works. It was supposed to be an operating system that was as huge a leap as Windows 95 was from its predecessor, an operating system we would all have to learn from scratch. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, it became apparent that time was running out and Vista could no longer be delayed. Very late in the development cycle they decided to seperate the whole new OS, that which we will see with the release of Vienna and simply make Vista predominantly a huge security update. Ok, fair enough, there are a few graphic enhancements, most of which are worse than XP in my opinion but the OS itself is very little different to XP.
Microsoft’s Vienna will feature a whole new file system and a new interface. Gone are the days of Start Menus and toolbars. I can’t even fathom what they have thought of to replace toolbars. Perhaps the whole thing is voice activated :p
Most significantly, Vienna will NOT be backward compatible with previous versions of Windows. This could be the one saving grace to allow Microsoft to actually bring a product to shelf on time for once, but at what cost? Is there any point in upgrading to Vista just for a few security bug fixes when in 2 years you are going to be looking at upgrading all over again? I’ll leave you to ponder…
on February 13th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Seriously - couldn’t they have just kept coding Vista to _be_ what they want Vienna to be?
Have you any external links on this by the way - I’d be interested to read more on it.
on February 13th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Most of the story really is a first hand report from someone I talked to in Microsoft Dan.
on February 13th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Fair enough.
I’ve done a bit of googling on it, but you seem to have the majority of the info in one place here.
Nice source