And that's why Microsoft will ultimately try to quell
the embarrassing
Windows Vista debacle by making a bold move with Windows 7 to win back
customer loyalty and generate positive spin for its most important product.
What will happen next?
My prognosis is that Microsoft will use smoke and mirrors to conjure up an
early release of Windows 7, the next edition of the world's most widely-used
operating system. Then they will quietly and unofficially allow IT
departments to migrate
straight from Windows XP to Windows 7.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has already alluded to this and IT departments
have certainly welcomed that idea, since most of them have found
very few
reasons to migrate to Vista - although my colleague John Sheesley recently
argued the devil's advocate position for IT departments to adopt Vista.
To be clear, I am not predicting that Microsoft will do a quick-and-massive
overhaul of Windows Vista in the next 12 months. Instead, I think we'll see
Microsoft do the following:
Strip out or minimize some of Windows Vista's clunkiest features -
especially User Account Control
Simplify the interface back to something closer to Windows XP
Reduce backward compatibility in order to streamline the code base
Work much harder with vendors to ensure driver and software compatibility
with new hardware and applications
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