News 

Gates: Windows 7 "coming next year"

Vista's been hiding in a darkened room with the lights off this week, after Bill Gates announced (sort of) that Windows 7 was coming to get it. In true horror movie fashion, our forums split into those cheering for the killer, and those who watch the carnage with a strange kind of fascination.

"I find it hard to believe that MS could release a brand new operating system so soon," says PalMal. "There was a five year gap between XP and Vista. Also, Microsoft has just synchronised its kernel code for Vista and Server 2008, and a new desktop operating system would put that out of synch again."

Trippynet disagreed, someone always does.

"I think Vista was originally planned to be released two or three years after XP but ended up slipping, hence the resulting five year gap... I'm sure that Microsoft will definitely be looking at a much shorter turnaround for Windows 7 in comparison to Vista. Not least because of Vista's generally mixed reception."

Gartner: Where did it all go wrong for Windows?

The reception wasn't mixed in the Gartner camp. The analyst firm offered Windows in general the sort of kicking usually reserved for away day football fans who stumble into the wrong part of town. Among the highlights, the analysts claimed new versions of Windows take too long to arrive, aren't innovative when they do, and usually break everything that came before.

Grunthose wasn't impressed: "Might

We certainly could have written that, but it would have been a much shorter article, and we wouldn't have been able to include that excellent comment in this roundup - see, it's all worked out nicely.

Tablot_Avenger thought the old analyst boffins were dead right though: "I think the point about too many versions of Vista is spot on. Most PC vendors seem to offer Home Premium as standard anyway, so I don't think there's any need for more than two versions of an operating system like Vista. If Microsoft could start listening to customers more and concentrate on producing well-written apps rather than overloading them with pointless bells and whistles, that might be a step in the right direction."

Nvidia boss lashes out at Intel

Potentially, but on to weightier matters. We're of course referring to the playground name-calling that's broken out between Nvidia and Intel over graphics cards. Apparently an integrated graphics chipset won't be as fast as a £250 graphical powerhouse designed by a company with nothing better to do - who'd have thought it?

Glovepuppet reckons the pressure's beginning to tell on the 3dfx killers: "Could Nvidia be starting to feel the pinch as laptops, consoles (and possibly even the diminutive iPhone) undermine the pathetic re-packaging of tired technology shoehorned into a shrinking esoteric gaming market?"

We're just interrupting to say we'd like to see the word esoteric pop up more on the forums. And paraphernalia, and gargoyle if you've got time. Thanks. And back to Glovepuppet.

"I always thought the joke was on the suckers who pay a fortune to play a few naff PC games before the inevitable annual upgrade necessitated by eye-candy... techno-dribble from the likes of PC Pro simply feed this kind of mania."

Mania, huh? Anybody willing to leap to our defence?

"If you don't like it don't buy the magazine. What else would a PC magazine review? I hope that you never accidentally purchase Custom PC, you might have a heart attack."

Thanks jamesyld, though about that not buying the magazine bit...

See you all next week.