Microsoft officials demonstrated faster boot-times, a better way to manage printers and external devices and some touch screen features during WinHEC event in Los Angeles.

Also, as Jon DeVaan, senior vice president of the company's Windows Core Operating System Division pointed out Microsoft seeks a better collaboration with the hardware makers to improve its Os, a thing that didn’t happened with Windows Vista.

Microsoft showed a similar PC, booting Windows Vista and Windows 7 and the new OS started several seconds faster compared to its predecessor.

However, Microsoft admitted that, basically, Windows 7 won’t be too different from Windows Vista. Both OSs will be based on the same kernel and practically Windows 7 is just Windows Vista with new flavor and some enhancements.

For Microsoft, building the next OS based on Windows Vista is a logical choice. The company has spent five years and billion of dollars to finally deliver Windows Vista. So it’s hard to throw away all this hard work and start from scratch.

Also, as Microsoft aims to release Windows 7 as early as fall 2009 or early in 2010 it’s clear it won’t have the time to change the fundamental architecture of its OS.

However, this approach could mean a real problem for Microsoft. Windows Vista was heavily criticized for its “hunger” for resources, for its compatibility issues and slowing down computers with features that most users never accessed.

In response, Microsoft said that Windows 7 will address those problems and it will try to correct the issues reported by users and companies.

However, the features demonstrated by Microsoft during WinHEC seem more like a Windows Vista SP 2 than a completely new approach on how users will interact with their PCs.

Microsoft seems to forget that the new OS will compete not only against Windows Vista but against a new suite of online services that aim to offer to the users the same work environment as their PCs.

So releasing an OS, which so far seems to be rather Windows Vista Service Pack 2 than a totally new experience it is not the answer the challenges Microsoft will have to face in the next few years.

On the other hand, Microsoft intends to release the new OS sometimes in late 2009 or early 2010, so besides some new features is hard to believe it will have time for some major revamp.

So, I assume is safer to expect that Windows 7 won’t rock our world, but at least we should hope that will solve some problems of Windows Vista.