Hear hear!  I was recently commenting Ballmer’s statement that Windows 7 would “be Vista, just a lot better.” Now it turns out Windows 7 will not be Vista but perhaps—hopefully—an entirely new direction for Windows. InfoWorld writes:

The reworked Windows: tighter, leaner
The operating system itself has gotten a considerable amount of reworking below the presentation layer. If M3 is any indication, that work has led to a tighter OS, and by “tighter” I mean that resource requirements are being lowered.

That’s the right direction! Microsoft should stop calling Windows 7 the “Vista 2.0!”

Update 29 October 2008: Or that would be the right direction. Randall Kennedy’s review of the first beta of Windows 7 doesn’t sound promising. Hopefully Microsoft has still a very long to-do list. They’d have the time, but do they have the focus? Otherwise Ubuntu, or perhaps PC-BSD look ever more enticing.