Summary: The ship of one among few top Windows executives has just sailed; more problems in Vista 7 are getting noticed and reported

Microsoft's Vista 7 was released less than a week ago and we already see a shadow of Windows Vista. The latest similarity that we find is an executive exodus in the Windows team; With the release of Vista, for instance, leaders of the Windows team left, including Poole and Allchin. It was no coincidence, as Allchin actually planned it that way and he conceded the captain's position after an excruciating struggle with Longhorn.

One of the existing leaders of Windows, Ben Fathi of ACPI infamy, calls it a day and moves on just days after the rather disappointing launch of Vista 7 [1, 2, 3].

We heard rumblings a few weeks ago that Ben Fathi, one of Microsoft's top Windows executives, was contemplating a career move, and today we were able to confirm through sources that Fathi is leaving to take a senior executive position with Cisco Systems Inc.

This is another major departure among many recent ones. It's the second one in less than a month that has another Microsoft executive landing inside Cisco's management.

So what went wrong anyway?

BusinessWeek wrote an article about Vista 7 BSoDs just a few days ago and now we find televised embarrassments where Vista 7 refuses to work in live broadcast, repeatedly even. Shades of Windows 98.

I feel fairly confident that it will not turn hairy users bald, nor cause sane users to enter institutions of mental restructuring.

However, I have been watching these two pieces of film from Japan with some small prick of concern.

GNU/Linux is in a decent position to take advantage and as one blogger has just put it:

College students, too, are experiencing problems when trying to install the new Windows 7. The problem stems from a Microsoft offer. For a limited time, students can purchase Windows 7 for only $29.00. However, it appears when students download and install the package, it's either corrupt of missing some key files.

I spoke with my nephew Mike (he has a CSI degree and works in the IT field) about installing Windows 7. He was on his way to his local MicroCenter to buy a copy of Windows 7. (He has to keep up with anything and everything new in the computer industry. And yes, he runs Linux) When installing Windows, Linux, etc., Mike always backs up his files, wipes his hard drive, and then does a fresh install.

No doubt we will be hearing about many more problems with Vista 7. It is only now that "real" users (not enthusiasts) use the product in an everyday setting. ⬆