Microsoft’s Windows 7 is not yet on shelves but the folks at the Windows OS team are already racking their brains, developing the next version of Windows – Windows 8. According to an embarrassing leak from an employee at the Redmon-based tech giant’s research and development team in the US, Windows 8 will support a 128-bit architecture.
Robert Morgan, a senior member of Microsoft’s Research & Development Team for the last seven years, accidentally revealed the software giant’s plans for Windows 8 and even Windows 9, on Linkedin, a popular networking site among business professionals.
On his profile, his described himself as: “Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP and IBM.”
His profile has been removed from the main Linkedin site to avoid anymore embarrassment but it’s still viewable in Google cache (screenshot).
Steve Ballmer has confirmed that the company is working on a client operating system to follow Windows 7 but details were not released. The earliest expected date would be 2012 he said.
Windows 7, which will be released on October 22, includes a number of new features such as advances in touch and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, DirectAccess, and kernel improvements. The biggest visual change is its taskbar, whereby the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with pinning applications to the taskbar. Buttons for pinned applications are integrated with the task buttons. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks. Windows 7 comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit architecture.