I agree with ceebee: I'd love to see how Windows 7 is going to support ultra-light PCs any better than Vista does. Or is MS once again hoping that improved technology will allow cheap-and-light machines to handle Vista/Win7 by then?
The problem is that the Windows core is, by design, a huge, ugly, monolithic monstrosity. With no built-in modularity, it becomes damned difficult to make a version "with most of the crap stripped out" without accidentally breaking something else, and making support so much more difficult.
Now even Linux is not a modern* micro-core design, but it's still much more modular and adaptable, stretching from hand-helds to super-computers. If MS keep dropping the ball like they have with Vista, then Linux has a VERY bright future ahead of it.
*) For "modern", read "largely academic and non-commercial". It's such a shame that the "real world" lags so far behind academia, except for "niche" systems like Plan 9. Although the economic prerogatives of backwards-compatibility make this inevitable.
Register
Ultimate non-modular
I agree with ceebee: I'd love to see how Windows 7 is going to support ultra-light PCs any better than Vista does. Or is MS once again hoping that improved technology will allow cheap-and-light machines to handle Vista/Win7 by then?
The problem is that the Windows core is, by design, a huge, ugly, monolithic monstrosity. With no built-in modularity, it becomes damned difficult to make a version "with most of the crap stripped out" without accidentally breaking something else, and making support so much more difficult.
Now even Linux is not a modern* micro-core design, but it's still much more modular and adaptable, stretching from hand-helds to super-computers. If MS keep dropping the ball like they have with Vista, then Linux has a VERY bright future ahead of it.
*) For "modern", read "largely academic and non-commercial". It's such a shame that the "real world" lags so far behind academia, except for "niche" systems like Plan 9. Although the economic prerogatives of backwards-compatibility make this inevitable.