A (teeny) bit of Windows 7 news

Steven Sinofsky and Microsoft are talking, a wee bit, about Windows 7, aka the successor to Vista.

In a post to the Windows Vista blog, Chris Flores tries to explain the secrecy surrounding this release, basically by saying, “It’s better for you if you don’t know.”

That’s fair. Kind of. Microsoft gets slammed for freezing the market and creating FUD when it talks too much about future releases. It also gets slammed for pretty much the same reasons for talking too little about releases. But, then again, Microsoft has some ground to make up with partners and customers who are disgruntled (to say the least) about how Vista was handled.

Flores refutes claims that Windows 7 will sport a new kernel. Instead “we are refining the kernel architecture and componentization model introduced in Windows Vista.”

These changes  “will not impact the user experience or reduce application or hardware compatibility.”

Where have we heard that before?

“In fact, one of our design goals for Windows 7 is that it will run on the recommended hardware we specified for Windows Vista and that the applications and devices that work with Windows Vista will be compatible with Windows 7.”

So that means my big fat HP Pavilion that barely runs Vista will probably barely run Windows 7? Please note that laptop was purchased with Vista installed and it was not a delightful user experience.

Flores links to a News.com interview with Sinofsky himself , the main champion of the silence-is-golden school of product development. True to form, Sinofsky says little. He doesn’t want to talk about the past (Vista) and doesn’t really want to talk about the future (Windows 7.) Which kind of makes you wonder why anyone bothered with this interview.
 here.

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techtarget.com.