Windows 7: Not Backward Compatible

In case you’re wondering what Windows 7 is going to be all about, there might be one thing that it’s not going to be. thebetaguy blog writes a comprehensive report about Microsoft’s plans for the upcoming operating system and there’s one thing that stands out from the rest (aside from the speculated release date, of course): Windows 7 “doesn’t think about” backwards compatibility at all.

Windows 7 takes a different approach to the componentization and backwards compatibility issues; in short, it doesn’t think about them at all. Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows codebase; partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows. Making the break from backwards compatibility is a dangerous proposal but a dream for software developers. Performance of native applications can be increased, distribution sizes can be cut down, functionality can be added without the worry of breaking old applications, and the overall end-user experience can be significantly improved.

The downside of the equation is that older applications are almost guaranteed to become incompatible with Windows 7. This means that when the operating system comes out, every program that was designed to work with its previous iterations will have to be rewritten from scratch. Considering that Windows is the OS of choice for the majority, we’re looking at a lot of programming.

Source: thebetaguy, Wikipedia

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