Microsoft: Moving to Windows 7 easy for device makers

Hardware and device makers that hadn't developed drivers compatible with Windows Vista when it was released shouldn't have the same problem with Windows 7, a Microsoft product manager said Wednesday.

Microsoft is building Windows 7 to ensure "a high level of compatibility with Windows Vista," so device makers that invested in creating drivers for Vista won't have to rebuild them from the ground up for Windows 7, said Jeff Price, senior director, Windows product management, in an interview.

[ Will the new Microsoft OS be better than Vista? Join the Windows 7 conversation in Randall C. Kennedy's Windows Sentinel blog. | See Tom Yager's first look at Windows 7. ]

When Vista was released, a major problem new users had was that their devices did not work with the OS. Unfortunately, many device drivers were not immediately available for Vista even though Microsoft spent more than five years building the OS, which should have given people plenty of time to prepare.

Building on a theme Microsoft stressed last week at its PDC (Professional Developers Conference) when it demonstrated Windows 7 for the first time, Price said Microsoft is learning lessons from problems Vista posed for users and technology partners, and is going to make the transition to Windows 7 as smooth as possible for hardware builders.

"We won't have this big set of work the ecosystem has to do to get compatibility with Windows 7," he said. "We're building on the same core architectural improvements in Windows Vista."

Price did not comment on why Microsoft did not better prepare hardware makers for Vista, saying only that there were architectural changes to Vista, particularly around security, that created "compatibility challenges" for third parties building drivers for the OS.

He cited changing the firewall platform and tightening security around how Vista "deals with applications and drivers" as stumbling blocks for hardware partners, but said these changes were "worth it" because they made Windows more secure.

"We know the infection rate for malware [in Vista] is less" than in XP, Price said.

Microsoft is giving hardware and device makers their first look at Windows 7 this week at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, which, like PDC, is in Los Angeles.

The company also is showing off some new features of the OS that will both make the user experience of connecting devices to the OS more efficient and make it easier for 3G wireless broadband providers to bring network access to the OS, Price said.

The former is called Device Stage, and will give Windows 7 users a streamlined view of all the features and files of a multipurpose device, such as a cell phone that also contains photos and music files, Price said.

"If you plug one of these devices in today, unless you have loaded apps into the device, you may not see the functionality," he said. "Device Stage puts all of that functionality into one window."