Windows Vista was supposed to just make you utter the Wow onomatopoeia when it launched for the general consumers, at the end of January 2007. And delivering a limp Wow, vista managed to fail at that simple task. At almost one year since it first hit the shelves, the Wow has died, and Microsoft has scrapped any reference to it from anything even remotely related to its latest Windows client. Having dropped the first Release Candidate for Vista SP1 and while gearing up for the final availability of the service pack, Microsoft is, in no way, preparing to revive the Wow.

In fact, the Redmond company is now focusing on its upcoming Windows client: Windows 7. In this context, Hilton Locke, Microsoft Software Test Engineer, went out on a limb and promised that Windows 7 was designed to virtually blow the user's mind with its touch features. Locke compared the interface of the iPhone to that of the upcoming Windows 7 and revealed that the touch capabilities of the latter would make the technology incorporated in Apple's phone irrelevant. "I will say that if you are impressed by the "touch features" in the iPhone, you'll be blown away by what's coming in Windows 7", Locke revealed.

Microsoft has a few projects in development, build on the concept of natural user interfaces. Microsoft Surface, the company's tabletop computer, is just such an example, with the interface allowing for multi-touch capabilities, as well as gesture and object recognition. Surface, at this point in time, is based on Windows Vista. But at the same time, Locke referred to Tablet computers. And in this regard, the company is already hard at work on InkSeine, a project from Microsoft Research that could find its way into Windows 7, running on Tablet machines. Windows 7 is currently planned for 2010.