As you probably know, high-end versions of Windows 7 (due later this year) will support an add-on called “XP Mode,” a Virtual Machine which will run applications designed for Windows XP right alongside other apps in Windows 7.
This step was taken primarily to make Windows 7 more attractive to businesses, which often rely on years-old software that will run in XP, but not in Vista or Win7. This is a welcome feature in itself, but I’m more interested in what this could mean for future versions of Windows.
The major factor keeping Windows much the same from version to version is the need to be backward compatible with thousands of programs written for older versions of Windows. If Windows XP Mode proves successful with real users, Microsoft could finally begin work on a radically different, modernized version of Windows, one not weighed down by previous versions’ code.
By relying on new and improved virtual machines (and next generation multi-core CPUs) to run legacy software side-by-side with new software, Microsoft is free to change Windows however it likes. And Windows could use some ground-up innovation.
Microsoft hasn’t fundamentally changed its PC operating system in years, and in many ways, Windows relies “on technologies that are 30 years old,” according to Galen Hunt, Principal Researcher for the Microsoft Research Operating Systems Group. Imagine the minds at Microsoft being freed from 20th century restraints. Rather than rigging Windows to work with new hardware, support could be included right from the jump.
Microsoft is already working on Windows 8, so I’m not optimistic that it will be the grand departure. But hopefully, Windows 9 might be the version that finally marks the true next-gen jump for Microsoft’s ubiquitous OS.
Perhaps even the name Windows is too last century for what is to come.