Microsoft has finally decided to give up on making users see the light on Vista as a lost cause. They are instead focussing on the next generation of Windows - Windows 7 as their only salvation.

Publicly, Microsoft has said Windows 7, the successor operating system to the firm's much maligned Windows Vista, will not ship until early 2010, but its internal calendar has June 3, 2009 as the planned release date. The beta of the software is to be released on October 27 at its Professional Developers Conference. Already Microsoft are working on the third major build, M3 (which are made prior to the beta).

Inside sources confirm that internal builds have already been made available to partners for hardware and software certification. Windows 7 is not a whole new OS but an evolution of Vista, and will reuse the old kernel and device driver model. That means it would use the kernel in its newer state, when Microsoft updated it with Vista's first service pack. It also means existing device drivers for Vista will work on Windows 7.

A leaked early build , M1 of Windows 7:

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