The "All Things Digital Conference," which was held at Carlsbad, California, featured a discussion with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Balmer. Among other subjects, like the failed Yahoo acquisition and Bill Gates’s departure, there has been a live demonstration of how the company’s next operating system, Windows 7, will look like.

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much insight information on the subject. What could have been seen was just the fact that the new operating system had full support for touch screen interfaces.

Even though this is not an entirely new thing, as Microsoft’s Surface Table and Apple’s iPhone already have it, the fact that the feature is now embedded into an operating system that will run on desktops and notebooks could mean that more PC users will have access to it, at a fairly reasonable price.

The strange thing about the presentation is the fact that Microsoft has chosen for the demo some applications that bear a striking resemblance to their Apple and Google counterparts. Rescaling photos using the touch screen is something people have already seen on the iPhone, while the mapping program that was presented looked pretty much like Google Maps.

While the preview could be a good marketing strategy for Windows 7, it is not very clear whether this will affect Vista or not. The operating system, which was launched in late 2006, has not been very well received by the public, even though Steve Balmer has announced that there were 150 million units sold.

Parading the new Windows 7, and saying that it will solve all the problems Vista has, could make some people wait for another year and a half until 2010, when the new operating system is supposed to be released.