Announced by Microsoft on last Friday in the Windows 7 Engineering blog, Windows 7 will have the ability to turn certain major functions and applications off in its next version of Windows. While having the ability to turn off features isn't really all that new, we have this ability in Vista, Server products, XP, and so fourth however this is the first time we have had the ability to say turn off Internet Explorer - which is a major milestone for Microsoft IMO. The idea is to give users the "choice and control" in Windows 7. Don't like something that comes pre-installed? Microsoft's answer: to allow the consumer to turn the feature or application off.
In the Release Candidate for Windows 7 you'll notice the "Windows Features" section, where you can turn features on and off, has grown substantially. As with previous versions of Windows, if a feature is not selected, it is not available for use. This means the files (binaries and data) are not loaded by the operating system (for security-conscious customers) and not available to users on the computer. These same files are staged so that the features can easily be added back to the running OS without additional media. In addition to the features that were already available to turn on or off in Windows Vista, they've added the following features to the list in Windows 7:
•Windows Media Player
•Windows Media Center
•Windows DVD Maker
•Internet Explorer 8
•Windows Search
•Handwriting Recognition (through the Tablet PC Components option)
•Windows Gadget Platform
•Fax and Scan
•XPS Viewer and Services (including the Virtual Print Driver)
"It is worth describing the details of remove since this too is a place where there are engineering and customer decisions to be made. We've already seen one decision which is to make sure we keep the features staged for future use so that a DVD is not required. A second decision is that we also continue to support the APIs available for features where these APIs are necessary to the functionality of Windows or where there are APIs that are used by developers that can be viewed as independent of the component. As many of you know these are often referred to as dependencies and with Windows the dependencies can run both internal to Windows and external for ISVs." the Windows Team Blog stated.
I think this is a great move by Microsoft and it shows that they are moving more towards how open source Operating Systems work. Linux distributions for example come with some pre-installed applications and users are able to add or remove as they wish - allowing them to completely alter what is on the system down all the way down to the kernel. Of course, I don't expect to see Microsoft move to this granular of an approach to software management but I do see them moving more towards a "Package System" like in Linux. Perhaps in Windows 8 we will see a software management system where you can centrally add and remove applications like we do in the open source world.
For now, and for Windows 7 - I'm happy to see some progress being made towards giving the consumer control of what's on the operating system. I only hope that Microsoft builds on this and extends the functionality further.
Microsoft released Windows 7 Beta 1 back in January of this year and has been considered "a hit" by many consumers, enthusiasts, and review sites. The final release is expected by the end of the this year. The exact date and pricing information is not yet known
