Windows 7 logo illustration by dint of. Seattle Times graphics carver Gabriel Campanario.

Several stories today are tracking the status of Windows 7, the next reading of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. Mary Jo Foley, who watches the OS as closely as anyone, states that a ordeal version of 7 “is poised to make its national debut at the Consumer Electronics Show” next week in Las Vegas. She notes that Microsoft has said this test version, Beta 1, will have existence “feature complete.”

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Ars Technica has details on the Beta build of Windows 7 that leaked onto the Internet over the weekend.

Language in the licensing agreement attached to the leaked Beta has the software expiring Aug. 1, 2009. Foley adds that the latest rumors she’s heard for a Windows 7 release to manufacturing are July. Ed Bott, who has more details from the licensing agreement, is saying May or June. And Adrian Kingsley-Hughes tested the Beta code.

InfoWorld, too, has a smaller technical look at Windows 7, telling clan to rely upon “a fixed Vista [which] leave subsist welcome to users who found the operating plan’s security controls, new interface, and exemplification compatibilities woes to subsist very off-putting.”

Meanwhile, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land offers “Tough Love for Microsoft Search”: “I also feel the identical people within Microsoft who are in this way diligently trying to succeed are let downward by a company culture overall that sees the internet and search in particular as a kind of sideshow.” The lengthy essay makes this main point in several ways (the privation of Gates or Ballmer at any greater search discourse; the absence of search from Microsoft’sitting “Software + Services” tagline — in opposition to Google’session “Search, Ads & Aps”), as well as faulting the company for wearisome to over-integrate search with other products, failing to find a cohesive search brand and more.

With the year coming to an end, InfoWorld asks, “What future is in accumulation for Microsoft?” The prognosis is promiscuous:

“Microsoft seems to have lost a cohesive outline for its future, allowing the debacle that is Windows and the bizarre interface changes in Office and Internet Explorer to come to market. Yet this same company has produced a great server operating system (Windows Server 2008) and sharing server (SharePoint 2007), and shows encouraging work in its touch-interface technology (Microsoft Surface), in addition to well-regarded midmarket vocation apps (Microsoft Dynamics) with a world-class user interface. It’session without deductions that there are indeed multiple Microsofts with their own visions and execution strengths.”

InfoWorld goes on to describe five Microsofts of 2018, 10 years down the road, and asks readers which one they agree with. It’s an interesting exercise.

Mary Jo Foley also takes a gander in her crystal ball and it’s worth looking from any to another her shoulder.

On the philanthropy front, The Financial Times has a profile of Patty Stonesifer, “The woman who built the Gates Foundation.” It gives her a lot of credit for the foundation as it stands today: “As Ms. Stonesifer heads to the Smithsonian Institution, she bequeathes Mr. Gates the world’s largest philanthropic organisation, the legacy of that - both its strengths and weaknesses - is almost as much hers as his.”


Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2008/12/30/microsoft_news_roundup_windows_7_beta_tracking_tou.html