If you're like most Windows XP users, you're perfectly willing to wait for Windows Vista Service Pack 13 to be released before upgrading. Well, there's good news. If you can hold out for three more years, you can skip over Vista entirely and get the next version of Microsoft's operating system, which the company is internally referring to as "Windows 7."

The announcement came at a sales force conference in Orlando this week. Microsoft plans to get back to releasing Windows upgrades on a regular schedule. Windows Vista was released more than five years after the last operating system, Windows XP.

But we kind of knew all that. So the only real news to come out of this sales force meeting is that Windows is no longer using the codename "Vienna" for the next operating system. The nomenclature behind "Windows 7" is a bit unclear though. The way we see it, the new OS should be called Windows 11. Or if you take out NT, Windows 10. Perhaps OS 10?

1. Windows 1.0
2. Windows 2.0/2.1
3. Windows 3.0/3.1
4. Windows 95
5. Windows 98
6. Windows ME
   
7. Windows NT
8. Windows 2000
9. Windows XP
10. Windows Vista
11. Windows 7

Okay, so Microsoft's probably pretending that Windows 1 - 3.11 and NT don't count. But the company's got three years to come up with a snappier name than "Windows 7." Best get started soon.
[via Engadget]

I'll believe it when I see it, but Microsoft is planning a late 2009 release date for the next version of Windows, codenamed Vienna. That would be just two and a half years after the launch of Vista, which in turn was released more than 5 years after Windows XP.

Many of the upgrades that were planned for Vista had been put on hold when it became clear that the most important item for Microsoft to focus on was security. Therefore Vienna will feature a new file system and a new user interface (no more start menus or toolbars), which had originally been intended for Vista.

Most significantly, Vienna will break backward compatibility with many existing Windows programs. While that will probably make it easier for Microsoft to hit it's projected release date, I can't imagine too many folks will be happy about the need to upgrade almost all of their existing software. That said, it's possible that Vienna could include some sort of virtualization layer that would allow you to run older programs. Heck, if you can run Windows applications on Linux using Wine, why not run Windows programs on Windows?

[via Engadget]

Though Redmond has been uncorking bottles of champaign lately for the release of Windows Vista, they certainly haven't stopped looking forward. The next two versions of Windows are already on the drawing board, and have been for some time. Their codenames are Fiji and Vienna (Vista's was Longhorn, if you recall), and they're the successors to the Windows throne according to a blog called Unnecessary. Fiji is planned as a "Second Edition" of Vista, which is intended to finally bring some of those promised Longhorn features that never materialized to Vista. Among them: More new UI features, a more powerful Sidebar, tighter Windows Live integration, more advanced speech recognition, WinFS (finally!) on top of NTFS, maybe a music-authoring program called Monaco, and more.

Vienna (formerly known as Blackcomb) is slated to be the next huge leap forward for Windows, "similar to the transition from OS 8-9 to OS X." Vienna will break application compatibility with previous versions of Windows to make room for a "newer, more flexible, richer and secure platform." Among the new features will be a completely overhauled interface ("No more explorer shells, and taskbars. No start menu. Probably no toolbars, or menus."), speech recognition as a "major input device," a new version of NTFS wrapped in WinFS ("No more drives, or files/folders location to worry about. File Management will be done through applications, which will automatically index and sort the files they support."), and more.

Ooh, that all sounds great. But take it with a grain of salt. Preferably the biggest one you can find. I would love to see all of these new features in the next versions of Windows, but Longhorn/Vista has taught me not to hold my breath. Don't get me wrong, I am optimistic about the future of Windows, and I love reading lists like this.. but let's not count our chickens before they're hatched.

[Via Engadget]

Download Squad readers totally rock! To everyone, thanks for all the feedback on our RSS Readers: SOUND OFF! post. There are so many options to choose from, and I haven't had a chance to really go through them all, so I will be posting my thoughts on the top RSS readers in the next week or two. DLSQ's reader-cloud is much wiser than I am. Several of the readers you mentioned I had never heard of. Thanks to everyone. I have a new favorite out of all the RSS readers I glanced at over the weekend. Drumroll and spotlights please...GreatNews is the winner! Not only was GreatNews the most recommended at last count (tied with Sage) but it is simple and powerful. I love it. I really like the newpaper layout and easy to use features. My favorite part about it was the ability to enter a web address, and GreatNews will pull any feeds from the page and list them at the bottom via an RSS icon. A simple click or two and you've subscribed. It is a piece of cake. Here are your top results:

• GreatNews - 8 votes
• Sage (firefox plugin - 8 votes
• FeedDemon - 6 votes
• Flock - 6 votes
• Google Reader - 6 votes
• Bloglines - 5 votes
• Netvibes - 5 votes
• Omea - 4 votes

Others were Bloxor, Alesti, Abilon, Endo, FeedLounge, FeedReader, Gregarius, Klipfolio, Onfolio, RSSbandit, Fizzle, Thunderbird, Vienna, Opera, RSSpopper, IntraVnews, Pluck, Reblog, SharpReader, Rojo, NewsAlloy, NewsHutch, IE7, humanized, BlogBridge, Awasu, a few homegrown varieties (very cool) and a few others I may have missed.