Microsoft officially announced Tuesday that it plans to expand its testing of Windows 7 to the general public in early 2009. However Microsoft has unveiled quite a bit of the next Windows operating system (OS), Windows 7, at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week.

Among the enhancements presented at the conference, one can find Windows 7, the forthcoming operating system, to let users choose to see fewer alerts and warnings from their computers because rampant notifications and pop-up windows alerting people to potential security risks have irked many users of Windows Vista. Reportedly, this is more an improved version of Vista rather than XP, or something altogether new. And while it currently resembles the former OS quite a lot, this is likely to change as we get closer to the public release. Anyway Microsoft said applications that are compatible with Windows Vista will work with Windows 7 because the two operating systems share the same basic architecture.

Installation can be done on top of Vista, with data being preserved. The deployment process can be completely scripted; specific applications can be installed as part of the deployment.

"We had all the best intentions of helping to secure the PC platform even more, particularly for novice PC users who needed to be protected," said Steven Sinofsky, a senior vice president in Microsoft's Windows group, according to the Associated Press. But Sinofsky acknowledged that Microsoft needed to work earlier and more closely with outside companies to avoid a similar mess in Windows 7.

Microsoft also said that it would issue a public beta of the Vista successor early next year. The beta will be available to anyone for
download, Microsoft said, according to several real-time blogs covering the event

Microsoft has also reduced" disk I/O in Windows 7 that occurs when reading the registry, and overall has focused on boosting power saving, boot speed, and responsiveness, "making them respond as instantaneously as possible," according to Sinofsky. Moreover in Windows 7, Microsoft has re-programmed all mouse commands with touch technology, adding support for a range of gestures and building an on screen keyboard with predictive text into the Windows interface, Sinofsky also said.

Another new improvement is called "Jump Lists," and it provides updated lists of recently worked-on documents or often visited Web sites without first having to open Microsoft Word or an Internet browser.

Sinofsky said there is no date yet for the next milestone, a "release to manufacturing" version of Windows 7, but reiterated that the system is set to go on sale in early 2010.

During the same conference, Takeshi Numoto, a general manager for Microsoft's Office group, also showed off lightweight, functioning versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote software that work in Web browsers and look as they normally do, but don't have to be installed on a PC. How convenient!

Rob Helm, a senior analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft, said that both Windows 7 and Office Online should work out well for the company.

"Both are good improvements," he said. "Windows 7 will help Microsoft overcome the weakness of Vista, while Web-based Office is a direct response to Google. Many businesses will like it because they have lots of users who don't use many of the Office features."