Windows Fiji and Windows Vienna to succeed Windows Vista

A few days ago someone called James Kyton published a bunch of information about Windows Fiji and Windows Vienna on his blog. I'm not sure who Kyton is but he lists a lot of information on his blog about the successors of Windows Vista.

Windows Fiji:
This operating system will be a small update of Windows Vista, he refers to it as "Windows Vista R2", it will be released in 2008. Fiji will feature some updated and features that were originally planned for Windows Vista. Here's a quick look at some of the new features in Windows Fiji:

Slightly updated user interface with more powerful sidebar that supports more than just widgets.

.NET Framework 3.5 (or 4.0)

WinFS to provide us Virtual Folders.

Updated versions of all bundled applications

Tighter integration with Windows Live. Kyton talks about a project called "Codename Nemo", which is a media center application that integrates Windows Live Messenger, Spaces and other Live services.

A competitor to Apple Garageband called Monaco.

Default support for playback of HD-DVD and maybe Blu-ray playback.

Better speech recognition.

NGSCB to make your system more secure.

A bunch of new themes, icons, games, wallpapers, etc.

Windows Vienna:
This operating system was formerly known as Blackcomb and will be a huge update. Windows Vienna will be a lot more secure, flexible and richer. However, this also means old software will need updates and patches to become compatible with this new Windows platform.

The entire interface of Windows Vienna will be different than previous Windows versions. There will be no start bar, no explorer shells and no taskbars. Probably there won't even be toolbars or menus. Here's a look at some of the new features:

Speech Recognition will get a much bigger role in Windows and third party applications as an input device, but it won't replace the keyboard and mouse.

Many new projects from Microsoft's R&D. Especially from their VIBE research centre. One of the rumoured changes is a "pie-menu".

New version of NFTS wrapped in a more powerful WinFS. File management will be downe through applications which will automatically index and sort the files they support. You will no longer have to worry about drives or files/folders location.

Major changes to bundled applications. Kyton gives the changes between Windows Media Player 6 and Windows Media Player 11 as an example.

Search will become much more important.

Security flaws in one application won't affect the entire OS because of a new sandbox mode.

These features may still change but it looks like Windows Vienna will be a new generation in computing. Windows Vienna is planned for 2010, but we all know that these release dates can slip a few years..