Bye Bye Windows Vista

Well, it looks like Windows Vista has been placed on the chopping block already. Bill Gates (I’m sure we all know who Bill Gates is) announced on Friday that the next version of Windows– Windows 7– would be released “sometime next year.” That announcement came paired with another, almost equally astonishing announcement: Microsoft is extending support for Windows XP through 2010. Sluggish sales of Vista had already prompted Microsoft to extend support for Windows XP through the end of 2009, laying to waste Microsoft’s original announcement that it would end support for Windows XP in June of this year.

Now, I’ve already posted a speculative post on what Windows 7 might be, and you can find that post here. In that post I stated that a 2009 release could be a minor release, i.e., Windows 7 would basically be a leaner, hopefully faster and more secure, Windows Vista. Indeed, most of the improvements would be “under the hood.” The biggest improvement will be that Windows 7 should have a full implementation of Microsoft’s MinWin project. This project was an attempt to really downsize the Windows kernel to the smallest possible size required to have a fully functional operating system. Microsoft has stated that the Windows 7 kernel will be a slim 100 files totaling just 25 megabytes, compared to Vista’s 5,000 files totaling 4 gigabytes. Windows 7, therefore, should be a more resource-efficient system and should help respond to critics who said that Vista was too bloated.

Now, before we get all excited we should put this announcement in context. First, let’s remember that Windows Vista and Windows 7 come from the same development path. Long ago, Microsoft had no vision of a Windows Vista. It was only released because development of what we now know to be Windows 7 was behind schedule and Microsoft felt it needed to release a new operating system to stay competitive. Windows Vista took the things that were close to being finished and bundled them together into an operating system. So, this early release date should really come as no surprise as Windows Vista was nothing more than the stuff that was near completion at the time, whereas Windows 7 will have all the features Microsoft originally intended to put into their next operating system after Windows XP. Given the hurried, unplanned, ad hoc nature of Windows Vista development it should come as no surprise that Vista was plagued by problems. Windows Vista is like the lovechild you have with the postman, Windows 7 is like when you conceive the son/daughter you’ve always wanted after years of trying and in-vitro fertilization.

But, given the long development path for Windows Vista we should be prepared for Windows 7’s release date to be pushed back. Hopefully it won’t be. What Microsoft needs to do to restore consumer confidence is to release a quality operating system (stable, good hardware/software support, fast, secure, thoughtful features) on schedule. Only Windows Millennium has had a worse run than Windows Vista.  The bright side of the Windows Millennium debacle was that it brought us two great operating systems: Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Hopefully this headache with Windows Vista means that the next two releases–Windows 7 and whatever comes after it– will be just as great, if not better, than Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

NOD32: Preliminary Results

Well, I’ve been testing NOD32 by Eset. Like most antivirus products I look at, this one is held in pretty high esteem by those who own it. There are a lot of nice features it has. The layout is easy to use: icons are clearly labeled, it’s easy to navigate, and the GUI just plain looks good. The menus for the advanced features are more cumbersome, but I don’t weigh that as highly because the average user really isn’t going to ever access the advanced features.

Scanning was quick, updating was quick, and NOD32 did find four executable files that it didn’t have definitions for so it gets a pat on the back for that. It removed 18 infections without any trouble.

HOWEVER, the preliminary results are that NOD32 totally missed (like, just didn’t even question) 3 known rogue antispyware programs: Virus Heat, VirusRanger, and AntiSpywareKit 5.3. These are not new-fangled programs. Newer, yes, but a google search of each shows that at least one of the first five hits indicates the program is malicious. If average people can figure this one out and post it on blogs and forums, well, you’d think Eset could too. The fact that NOD32 just totally missed these three programs will really hurt it in the final analysis, but first I have to confirm that there is nothing else that NOD32 missed.

So, the current outlook for NOD32 isn’t looking good, and it will certainly be bleaker if I go back and find that there is more that NOD32 missed that I can’t find just by casually browsing the Program Files directory. The full review should be up next week, so stay tuned.