Wow! What a week - so much talk of the next version of Windows code-named “7”. Of course the multi-touch (see video below) is what everyone is talking about. Now, this is cool because it is the evolution of the Surface which is scaled down to a screen.

If you have not seen a Surface - it is quite big and works with five infrared cameras which picks up the gestures and then knows what to do with it (more on Surface at another time).

But in addition to multi-touch we also know there is no new kernel for Windows 7, instead Microsoft is refining the existing kernel. So if you were betting on WinMin (which BTW is only 25 mb!) being there then forget it . Windows 7, will ship around three years after Vista shipped - in other words we should see it sometime next year.

Of course you have got to have screen shots - there has been a lot of speculation if they are genuine or fake, but they sure do look cool. Check out the top left and right corners of the screen shot above and the way the task bar is layed out - nice! I can’t wait to get the first drop of this and see how it pans out! Given this is build on top of Vista hopefully we won’t have too many issues with drivers making early adoption of this more painless compared to Vista.

Windows 7 first demo shown at D6: