Software (7863)

Forget Vista, Microsoft's next OS coming 2009

Codenamed Vienna, launch is just 2 years away

11 February 2007 19:44 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Vista is only just out the door, but that hasn’t stopped a Microsoft executive saying that the software company plans to deliver its next operating system in just 2 years time.

While you're busy waiting for Apple to launch software updates or Microsoft to release its first service patch, the company is actually busy building the next version of its operating system.

Details are still sketchy on the new OS due in 2009 and codenamed “Vienna”, but Ben Fathi, an executive vice president of development said "You can think roughly 2, 2-and-a-half years is a reasonable time frame that our partners can depend on and can work with".

The comments were made at this year's RSA Conference, a conference on information security, in San Francisco.

Window Vista which was launched at the end of January was over 2 years late and 6 years in the making. The delay has been placed on a number of security issues which forced the company to concentrate on fixing problems in Windows XP rather than developing Vista.

According to Fathi, actual details of what will be new and exciting in the new OS is still being worked out however he said; "We're going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors [is a virtualization platform that allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer at the same time], I don't know what it is … Maybe, it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers".

"It's too early for me to talk about it", he added. "But over the next few months I think you're going to start hearing more and more."

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