Windows 7 or Strata?

Alastair Otter

Alastair Otter is a senior journalist at MyBroadband, and focuses on software and hardware. He has a particular love for Open Source Software (OSS)...

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Windows 7 or Strata? If you’re a Windows user then one of those is likely to be the name of your next operating system. Microsoft has now confirmed that the "7" name is in fact not just a codename for the successor to Vista but will also be the name printed on the boxes that will hit retail shelves in late 2009.

Strata, on the other hand, is the name being given to Microsoft’s planned "cloud computing" operating system. The name "Strata" was first spotted on Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference website, but was quickly removed once it hit the blogosphere. Coming, as it did, just days after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke of plans to release a cloud computing version of its operating system, the link is pretty obvious.

Windows 7

The good news is that a Windows 7 launch is not all that far off. Microsoft has already said that it plans to launch Windows 7 towards the end of 2009 and the company now also looks likely to launch a public beta phase with a group of selected testers in December this year. In fact, initial builds – called "M" builds – are already in private testing at this point.

Reports suggest that the initial builds of Windows 7 have an interface that looks a lot like Microsoft’s current Vista desktop. Most Microsoft watchers say that this is likely to continue until after the initial couple of milestone builds and interface changes will only be added closer to the beta phase.

The big change, however, is the inclusion of multi-touch capabilities. It looks like Microsoft will include a number of the technologies used in its Surface computing project in Windows 7. The multi-touch features will allow users to move objects around the desktop, flip them over and scale them, all using the touchscreen. (Video)

The touchscreen capabilities are also expected to be integrated across the entire operating system. So users will also be able to pull up maps, drag icons and so on. Think iPhone with a Vista logo.

Other things that will likely get emphasis in Windows 7 include making the system more responsive than Vista so that it is more scalable for the smaller netbook category of PCs, better use of the desktop and Explorer to create gadgets that are tightly integrated, and better networking connection management.

All told, however, Microsoft is both playing down Windows 7 – Ballmer said this week that Windows 7 is Vista, just better – while at the same time proclaiming it to be its next operating system major release. Either way Microsoft is deliberately playing down a Windows 7 release to avoid creating expectations that may be hard to meet, as they did with Vista.

Strata

Windows Strata, or the cloud version of Windows, is even less clear. What does look likely, however, is that Windows’ cloud computing edition will combine Windows Live with some sort of "mesh" applications which will allow users to access applications through the Web. This is not entirely new as Google and others are already making headway in this arena but Microsoft will probably build these applications around Javascript and its recently-released Silverlight 2 technologies.

In all likelihood Windows Strata, despite what Ballmer suggests, will not debut as a standalone product but as a subset of technologies built into Vista, or more likely, Windows 7. The idea will be to bake those Web-access technologies into the operating system.

Windows 7 discussion