Chicago (IL) – Microsoft is reportedly considering halting sales of Vista once Windows 7 is released.
The company is “still not sure if (computer manufacturers) will be able to ship Vista once Windows 7 is made available,” General Manager Richard Francis told IDG’s Network News.
Francis also confirmed that the company would stop supporting all versions of Vista in April 2012. However, Microsoft will allow enterprise customers to downgrade to Vista from a pre-installed version of Windows 7.
Windows Vista has proved unpopular among a number of users due to an over-abundance of security prompts and slow response time. Mike Nash, corporate vice president of the Windows product management group at Microsoft, explained that Windows 7 will “run better” than Vista.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a version of Windows that will actually run better [than the previous version] on the hardware that most customers have,” Nash told reporters during a conference call. According to Nash, Windows 7 will run faster on systems such as netbooks, which have less processing power and memory than other computers.
As TG Daily previously reported, Microsoft recently released the Release Candidate (RC) of Windows 7 to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. General public availability is espected to follow on May 5.
New RC features include remote media streaming, Windows XP Mode and a beta of the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. A number of enhancements have also been made to existing features based on feedback from beta testers, such as an updated taskbar and improved functionality for touch screen machines.
“Listening to our partners and customers has been fundamental to the development of Windows 7,” says Bill Veghte, senior vice president for Windows business at Microsoft. “We heard them and worked hard to deliver the highest quality Release Candidate in the history of Windows. We have more partner support than we’ve ever had for an RC and are pleased to say that the Windows 7 RC has hit the quality and compatibility bar for enterprises to start putting it through its paces and testing in earnest.”
The updated minimum system requirements for Win 7 are now 1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor, 1 GB of RAM (32-bit)/2 GB of RAM (64-bit), 16 GB of available disk space (32-bit)/20 GB (64-bit), DirectX 9 graphics device with Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 or higher.
