In October 2007, Microsoft distinguished engineer Eric Traut appeared in an online presentation and described something called MinWin, a component of Windows 7, the next desktop version of Windows. This revelation received massive news coverage in the tech world as it was the first time anyone from Microsoft had provided concrete details about Windows 7. But MinWin itself was interesting as well: According to Traut, MinWin was part of an effort to make Windows smaller by isolating the central binaries of the operating system into a bootable, usable core that, today, occupies just 25 MB of disk space! That's pretty impressive when you consider that the Windows Vista install image is over 4 GB in size, while the Windows Server 2008 Server Core image is about 1.25 GB.

With Windows Vista finally behind us, it's time to turn our attention to the next Windows client release, which is currently codenamed Windows "7", though Microsoft has used other code-names, like "Vienna" and "Windows Seven" in the past. Despite an almost complete lack of verifiable information about this next major Windows release, there is an excellent reason to begin discussing this project now:

->Microsoft isn't particularly interested in discussing Vienna. "The launch of Windows Vista was an incredibly exciting moment for our customers and partners around the world, and the company is focused on the value Windows Vista will bring to people today," Kevin Kutz, a Director in the Windows Client group at Microsoft said on February 13, 2007. "We are not giving official guidance to the public yet about the next version of Windows, other than that we're working on it. When we are ready, we will provide updates." This quote was provided after I wrote a WinInfo article denouncing recent news reports about Vienna, all of which provided absolutely no new information at all.