Applause and criticism of Windows are nothing more than collateral products inherent with the success and ubiquity of the product on the operating system market. According to Larry Osterman, Microsoft Senior Software Development Engineer, some of the negative input associated with the Windows platform point to the abandoning of the current kernel and starting up from scratch.

Osterman however indicated that there is absolutely no chance of Microsoft throwing away the core of the operating system and starting up from scratch with a new technology. Windows 7 (Seven), the successor of Windows Vista is an illustrative example of Microsoft carrying on with the Windows development based on the foundation built with the previous versions of the client. Still, Osterman did not dispute the need for a change.

"And maybe they're right. Maybe Windows would be better if we threw away the current kernel and rewrote it using . I don't know, and I doubt that I'll ever find out. The reason is that making any substantial modifications to an operating system as large and as successful as Windows is hard. Really, really, really hard. You can see this with Vista - in the scheme of things, there were relatively few changes made to existing elements of the operating system (as far as I can tell, the biggest one was the conversion from the XP display driver model to the Vista display driver model), but even those changes have caused a non trivial amount of pain for our customers", he revealed.

And yet, Microsoft is indeed hammering away at the core of the Windows operating system. In this context, Windows 7, the product number imposed by Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, to replace the Vienna codename, will feature a brand new, and stripped down kernel. Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Eric Traut is piling off all possible components from the Windows kernel in search for a bare-bone core dubbed MiniWin.