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The fact of the matter is that, as far as the development efforts are concerned, Vista is a wrapped up chapter. The Redmond company has already begun moving forward. Of course that Microsoft too will have intermediary stages on its way to Windows 7.

A couple of them as a matter of fact in the coming year, with the availability of the first service pack for Windows Vista and the third and final service pack for Windows XP. Currently, Vista SP1 is planned for the first quarter of 2008, following the availability of Windows Server 2008, formerly code-named Longhorn, because of the shared kernel version. XP SP3 has a more relaxed launch date, as Microsoft is focusing on Vista. The third refresh for XP will be made available by mid 2008.

At the same time, Microsoft is also beginning to build the contours of Windows 7. Seven (7) is the label of Steven Sinofsky, the senior vice president for the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group — the user experience of Microsoft Windows and Windows Live services. Sinofsky did nothing more than to move the tradition of product numbers from the office project to Windows.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced the availability date for Windows 7: mid 2010. The move was strategically delivered to turn users away from XP and the future providential Vista SP1 and even Windows 7, and onto Vista. As the Redmond company applauded shipping in excess of 88 million Vista incenses worldwide to its channel partners, details about Windows 7 are increasingly starting to appear.

The fact that Vista’s successor will also come to the table in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors is not the only known aspect of the operating system. Microsoft is also hard at work developing a new minimalist kernel for Windows 7, Microsoft security guru Michael Howard has already debuted security training for the operating system, and the platform will also advance wireless networking.

On top of this, Windows 7 will also contain Direct Connect as a feature, according to Bink.nu. A prototype of Direct Connect is currently in use inhouse over at Microsoft and it will reportedly become a component of the server edition of Windows 7.