//steve clayton: geek in disguise

I beg to differ. It's an hobby! I mean, a car enthusiast is of course curious about the next years car models and so on.

And since MS got like 98% of the market of OS, of course there is a great interest.

/Nerd

I agree with Thomas.  

And as a MSFT employee I find it fascinating to watch internally the logistics of shipping the next version of a piece of software which by all accounts, runs much of "the world".

Also gotta say that I think you got this wrong Steve. This is something running on 90%+ of the world's pcs, used daily by hundreds of millions of people and where every minor change has a massive impact.

Your access to this kind of information means its a non-event for you, however you should be looking to improve the product, not ignore the development process!

(I'm also surprised to hear you say this given you're working on S+S and Windows is the biggest piece of software you have.)

Hmmmm.

After many years of false starts and many hundreds of rumours of what was allegedly 'coming' in Longhorn. I have to say, I'm bored of what I can a non-story for Windows 7.

I'll be enthused when we get concrete information from Microsoft over the next year. Until then, I'm happy with Vista.

Personally, I more excited by Microsoft's Live strategy.  S+S is what is making the Desktop come alive.

Windows 7 will be great no doubt. Many of the key learnings with be incorporated into it from Vista.  But Microsoft please, don't hype the product till its ready. Taking a leaf out of Apple's book would be welcomed.

Steve,

Shortsighted, very, very shortsighted post Steve. You'd figure that at a time that you couldn't buy a positive review of Vista, a relevant online portal / yahoo, single digit search share and a follower/mee-too role in the area of SaaS, cluster web services a nearly everything else relevant you would actually be GLAD that people are excited about something Microsoft is doing, not trying to downplay it.

-Vlad

Hi Steve, good thought starter and alot of buzz around this topic.

I share some of the same feelings, I am barely keeping up as a Partner with all the stuff happening out there today.  I don't even worry about what is next as do a number of my systems engineers that  employ.

We are too busy with life to worry about the next generation of Windows.  

I have missed so much of my early years worrying about the state of the industry, I do love what I do, but let me get centred on what we have right now first.

Cheers

Stuart Crawford

Calgary, AB

http://www.stuartcrawford.com

http://www.thewealthyprofessional.ca

Steve,

Windows is a mainstream product, so whatever release comes next is obviously going to come with a great deal of excitement, perhaps even moreso given the current status of Vista.

As for followers, Silverlight is what to Vista, SSDS is a free beta along with all your online services and a long trail to the AWS which is used by many companies (including you, via Twitter)..

This is going to sound crude, so please take it as a joke:

If all Microsoft has to be excited about is a friggin table, how big of an admission is that of your defeat on the desktop, laptop and the mobile device?

-Vlad

Stop teasing Steve or someone will have to start/continue filling in the blanks :P

Look at it this way, people got excited about the Indiana Jones film years ago when it was announced. Its a natural human reaction, and for people who follow it they stay excited and upbeat until the final launch. That's no reason not to talk about it so far in advance, the regular people will end up paying attention when appropriate and focus on short-term things until that point.

Now granted I did not make it to the Mix this year to see it with you, but I will find myself at PDC.

Silverlight is Microsoft's take on Flash. Yeah, it has HD video but thats really neither relevant nor useful with the bandwidth where it is. Again, just my opinion (and Youtube, and Hulu) that Flash is the defacto standard for video on the web. I view Silverlight in much the same light I looked at Microsoft's XPS technology trying to go after PDF - something that never really took off outside of few Microsoft sites and partners and eventually even got abandoned by Microsoft.

I have seen Surface at WWPC and at CES this year - cute, useless. I know, I know, it has limitless applications at over $10,000 a pop.

I didn't mean to come to your blog and bash Microsoft's lack of direction, I just wanted to point out that the ONE area everyone is excited about is Windows - and Microsoft has made one giant disappointment of Vista so we're all pulling for you to get it right next time and get back on the leading track not a mee-too of Flash/AWS/Google or a "friggin furniture company" :)

-Vlad

Sorry, had to throw in friggin again :)

I have a right to wonder about the next platform out from Microsoft considering I just spent a lot of money on Vista, a terrible OS full of pot holes. Luckily, those potholes keeps everybody else in business creating products to keep Vista running. Diskeeper pro should be mandatory with Vista, it kepps it crisp running along with 4gb ram. That is a bit sad, really, so do not question why I am wondering how microsoft could have the nerve to bring out a new os so soon after vist, billed as the next big thing! Maybe it is that secret word MONOPOLY!