Windows 7, what we know so far (no fakes)

Technorati Tags: Windows, Seven

In the last days many bloggers claimed to have tried Windows 7 M1 (Milestone 1), just to publish fake pictures and have some visits on their site.

Here the facts (more or less official)

Kernel

Seven will have MinWin like kernel, a little micro-kernel quite different from the "hybrid-kernel" of Vista. Microsoft is going on reducing NT kernel size in order to get a more flexible and modular system.

User Interface

Microsoft has reported that Seven M1 has a Vista like UI, on the other hand the work on the UI isn't started yet. Probably we will see a Ribbon-like UI considering that the new project leader is the old Office division leader.

For sure one of the keyword will be multi-touch UI.

"I will say that if you are impressed by the "touch features" in the iPhone, you'll be blown away by what's coming in Windows 7. Now if only we could convince more OEMs that Windows Touch Technology is going to drive their sales."

Hilton Lock on his MSDN blog pages

Surface should be a good sample and a good starting point. This new kind of input method will definitely change the way we use our PCs!

Windows Live integration

Well integrated software and wonderful web services. In a always-on world why don't take advantage of the Web? Operating system and bundled software should use Live platform to make the user able to communicate, share data, save settings in an easier way.

Virtualization

Say goodbye to compatibility issue, your old programs will run in a virtual machine (quite sure). Probably the standard API will be the .NET framework and Win32 API will only be available through virtualization.

Moreover it is possibile that processes will be more isolated than they are in Vista (like Singularity does).

64-bit

64-bit processors will be the only choice in 2010 so Seven would be the first Microsoft desktop operating system release optimized for this processors and not for 32-bit processors (like XP and probably Vista). We should talk about Windows 7 and Windows 7 x32 (yes, a 32-bit release is scheduled) while we now talk about Windows Vista and Windows Vista x64.

3-years operating system

Starting with Vista, Microsoft has decided that a new versione of its operating systems will be released every 3 years... so forget XP and its extra-ordinary long life!

In the end... please stop linking fake image and video!