There were problems with the final beta release in 2006 which they attempted to address in the hope of a pre-2007 launch date: As the end of 2006 loomed; however, Microsoft were still desperately struggling. By the time everything was supposedly sorted the holiday season was over
and despite the rush to hit the market with the product they lost the major advantage of the Christmas sales bonanza.

Unperturbed by this setback; Microsoft went ahead with the launch in the early part of 2007; but in their last-minute rush had overlooked many major issues which hadn’t been properly patched or remedied in the final retail release.

It wasn’t until 2008 when Service Pack 1 was launched in its own final retail release that these bugs were patched and remedied to a reasonable extent; yet despite this the new operating system was still buggier and slower than its predecessor; Windows XP.

People were starting to describe Vista as the second ME by this point; and despite Microsoft’s determination to press ahead – withdrawing sales of XP in June 2008 by the major system builders – the Microsoft following revolted by using the downgrade facility made available wit6h Windows Vista Business and Ultimate to revert their Vista installations back to XP. Still others abandoned the Microsoft camp altogether and defected to Linux or Mac OS*.

All-in-all the entire shenanigan was a complete embarrassment for M$; who still have the egg on their face to this day.

And today, with an entirely new openness and more user-interactive approach to development from Microsoft; Windows 7 looms on the horizon.

The softies originally set a release strategy for 1H 2010 for the new operating system; however Bill Gates let slip on numerous occasions, hints of a possible 2009 release schedule.

What would happen if M$ were to wait until 2010 to release 7?. They’d miss the holiday season again; and with their current reputation in tatters thanks to their late production of the best promotion campaign for XP ever; namely Vista, Microsoft need to get as many copies out as fast as they can immediately, following RTM of the final retail release; or those people expecting another damp squib – Which will I expect be a sizable percentage of those in the firing line of the new release – will prefer to either stick to their new Apple computer purchased at Christmas or in the January sales; or stick to their newly-downloaded Linux distro and not bother paying for another possible disaster of an operating system.

Although Windows 7 is currently billed by the supergeeks as ‘Vista that works with a few extras added’, it is surely going to come under close scrutiny from the online geek community; particularly the bloggers. If it’s not up to scratch I see people such as Michael Arrington; and possibly even the likes of tech bloggers such as David Risley; both of whom are converts from Windows to Mac, dissecting and analysing every last wrinkle and bug that Microsoft didn’t remove prior to release.

In all honesty I sincerely believe that Windows 7 will be make or break for M$; and following the recent fiascos it’ll not just have to be good but it’ll have to be particularly good in order to convince the critics that Microsoft still have the wind in their sails to keep the profit in their sales.