Thesis is done and filed…

…now waiting for a confirmed date for the defense. Looking forward to present the results and answer some nasty questions :)

Writing the thesis was a great experience. I could have worked for much longer, but the 3 month time limit is a good thing, cause otherwise it would be a never ending story!

Now I have time again for my private life, my job and (not to forget) blogging.

As Windows 7 showed up on the MSDNAA for download end of last week, I couldn’t resist and install it on my desktop and my netbook on Sunday. It actually runs quite smoothly – except of some immature drivers for the netbook (notably the Intel GMA500 display driver).
The current Vista driver works, but crashes with a BSOD after a couple of minutes when turning on the Aero (glass) UI. At least the standard theme works pretty stable.

Funny enough, Microsoft does not have any Bluetooth headset drivers included anymore, so I had to install the Broadcom (Asus package) BT-Stack to get my headset working with Skype and the SIP phone…

Will test a nice little device driver tool this evening (Device Doctor) that is already tested on Windows 7. Let’s see what that will find…

Windows 7 – a smart move from Microsoft!

After having a first look at Windows 7, I came to believe that Microsoft's strategy is actually pretty clever.

If you as a software company want to shorten the release cycles and increase license revenue, how would you do that? Create a perfect Software w/o any bugs that will be usable for the next 10 years – or better push out a nice looking one that has some flaws and get at least the geeks and OEMs to buy it? And then follow up with a better, faster and more stable one soon after, to sell again to all the early adopters and additionally to all businesses that now see the requirement and value in an upgrade?

Maybe Vista really was only intended to act as an intermediate to sell more copies?! Maybe it was not planned but an ‘accident’ ? Anyway, the differences from Vista to Windows 7 are not too big. But I guess Microsoft will get a lot of revenue out of Windows 7 in 2009 and 2010 (lets assume it will be released this year). Given the economic background, this could be the golden shot and ensure ongoing license sales at MS in a difficult time…

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