A bit more than a year after going gold, Microsoft is already assessing and discussing some lessons learned from Vista's underwhelming debut. ZDNet quotes Microsoft VP Mike Nash about the problems associated with the Vista launch and steps the company plans to take to prevent those kind of problems in the future. The two main problems Microsoft seems set on avoiding with the next version of Windows, dubbed Windows 7, are fewer architectural changes to Windows itself and more realistic release schedule.
The amount of significant changes to the core OS were blamed for many of Vista's delays, as well as many of the compatibility problems with existing products. While Microsoft doesn't regret making these changes to Vista (well, so they say), they are not making changes on that scale with Windows 7. When it comes to addressing release issues, Microsoft has made the decision to be less transparent about release schedules, only making information available when the date is actually feasible. Right now, Microsoft is aiming to launch Windows 7 sometime in 2010 (or 2011 or 2012...this is still Microsoft).
