| Microsoft nixes embedded Vista |
Oct. 28, 2008
 Microsoft will forsake its unloved Windows Vista codebase for the next generation of its premier, x86-based embedded operating system. The future Windows Embedded Standard, codenamed "Quebec," will be based on the forthcoming Windows 7 instead, says Kevin Dallas (left), general manager of Microsoft's Windows Embedded business.
Delivering a keynote at today's Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in Boston, Dallas told attendees "Quebec" will provide device manufacturers with "exciting new input capabilities," such as multitouch, gesture support, and other user interface enhancements. Like the current Windows Embedded Standard (WES) 2009, Quebec will be "componentized," letting developers create a operating system on their devices just only the drivers, services and applications they need, but will be newly available in a 64-bit version, added Dallas.
The announcement is timed to coincide with Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) this week in Los Angeles, where the company is seeding developers with "pre beta bits" of Windows 7 and talking up its features. Officially, Windows 7's release date is "within three years of the commercial availability of Vista," which would mean early 2010. However, widespread rumors indicate the new desktop OS will be released to manufacturing in October 2009, making it available in time for the holiday season. On a web page touting its WinHEC 2008 conference, scheduled for next month in Los Angeles, Microsoft says "there is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released."
Windows 7 features, according to previous Microsoft announcements plus a privacy statement on the company's website, will include not only the user interface enhancements alluded to by Dallas, but also:- BitLocker drive encryption, which can work in conjunction with a TPM (trusted platform module)
- Driver protection, which prevents the OS from starting drivers that are known to cause stability problems
- Internet Explorer 8 web browsing
- PNPx (plug-and-play extensions), which allows the OS to discover devices on a network, such as network drives and digital cameras
- Silverlight
- Windows Defender, protecting devices from malware
- Compatibility with the forthcoming Visual Studio 2010 environment for application development
Today's announcement that there will be no componentized version of Windows Vista could be taken as yet another slap in the face for the beleaguered operating system, widely seen as a bust despite multiple demurrers from Redmond. But, says Microsoft product manager John Doyle, the company had already backported key Vista technologies such as Windows Media Player 11, RDP (remote desktop protocol 6.1) and .NET Framework 3.5 to Windows Embedded Standard 2009, despite the latter's retention of the Windows XP codebase.
Doyle says, "For us on the embedded side, it's not about whether we skipped Vista or not. If you look at what the next-generation platforms would be in terms of timing, Windows 7 is the correct thing to snap to in terms of the operating system." The embedded version, Quebec, will be available "within a number of quarters" after the desktop edition's release, he added.
According to Doyle, Quebec will be compatible with Windows Vista-specific drivers and applications. Since few of the latter have been written, embedded developers apparently have little to lose from sticking with WES 2009 for now, except for one thing -- there's no 64-bit version. Promising a 64-bit version of Quebec, Microsoft says developers who need a large memory space in the meantime can license and adapt desktop versions of Windows XP or Windows Vista.
In fairness to Vista, technical capabilities may not account for the decision to skip the release in an embedded version. "Device developers need long term support," Doyle observed. In similar fashion, Linux distributors such as Ubuntu typically offer long-term support on only select releases of their operating systems aimed at servers and embedded devices.
Meanwhile, eWEEK has deemed Windows 7 to be a "big improvement" over Vista, in an early "walk-through" of Windows 7 posted today.
Further information
For further information on WES 2009, see our earlier coverage, here. For additional coverage of Windows 7 and Microsoft's PDC, see our sister site eWEEK.com, here. For a commentary by eWEEK's "Microsoft Watch" columnist Joe Wilcox on why "Windows Vista no longer matters," see here.
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