In a recent address at the Digital Lifestyle Consortium, Microsoft founder Bill Gates gave his view of the future. “I see Windows, a major new version of Windows every two to three years.” Now we can look forward to OS changes every 2-3 years?
For an IT department this would be a nightmare. For Microsoft it would be a 2-3 year injection of money as users are forced to shell out for upgrades to get the latest and greatest Microsoft OS features.
With the poor acceptance of Microsoft Vista the rumors of Windows 7 appearing as early as 2009 are running wild. Mr. Gates seems to have validated those rumors in his speech. What some may not realize is that Vista was not an upgrade of XP. It is the core of Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft is not about to start all over with a new core. Windows 7 will be an upgrade to Windows Vista, not a replacement. This may be the model that Bill Gates speaks of.
Other items of note from the speech:
When I walk up to a PC, if I’m on the phone, I should be able to have the call, if it’s connected through the Internet, run on the PC, and then if the person on the other end has a large screen, we should be able to bring up documents and edit them together at the same time we’re talking with each other.
Microsoft took a Windows machine with a camera and created a table-like device we call Microsoft Surface. And today it’s still fairly expensive, but that will come down in price so that the desk in the office will be a surface, and you can touch documents, you can look at business data, expand on that. You’ve seen this in science fiction films, but in fact, it’s becoming a reality now.
We’re hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I’m very excited about the work being done there. The ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone.
You can read the full transcript on the Microsoft PressPass web site.