Ballmer: Windows 7 Will Save £100 A Year

Although operating systems had a long “on-ramp”, he said Vista had seen “more vibration than I would hope to see with Windows 7.”

Overall, Windows should be the default on any new PC within three to six months of its launch, he said.

Quizzed about the competition with VMware in virtualisation, Ballmer said that Microsoft’s Hyper-V is cheaper and is catching up on functions.

He admitted that users had been “dinging” Microsoft on Hyper-V’s lack of features like live migration of virtualised servers, but pointed out that “VMware is very expensive,” and added that Microsoft provides tools to manage VMware.

“For all future virtualisation I’d recommend [our solution] – though I’m the least biased person on the planet.” Why would people spend money with VMware, when they can get a solution that is as good or better from Microsoft – “at a much lower cost.”

He took another dig at VMware when asked about partnerships and compatibility. “We have a very good partnership with Citrix, with Citrix rounding out our high end features,” he said. “I can’t claim VMware as a collaborator in any effort.”

“The world is dealing with heterogeneity,” he said. “I wish there was less of it. I wish it all came from us, but we want to help the world deal with a heterogeneous environment.”

Gestural computing

Ballmer is gung-ho to get “gestural computing” – which uses a camera to interpret user gestures as a new input method – and other new input methods into business computing.

The idea is currently being prototyped on the Xbox, in Project Natal, but it’s going to be slow work getting it into business machines, he said, in response to a request form the floor.

“I am on your side,” said Ballmer. “I am leaning on everybody to get it on the desktop sooner rather than later”. But the technology is not ready yet, he said because the Xbox version “does a really good job on things more than two feet away – so it doesn’t work well for the desktop.”

The technology could work well on large screens in presentation rooms, but it would take new technology to have it working on the desktop, he said.

It also needs work on business applications, more useful than tennis.

The technology will be commercially available on the Xbox in 2010, and in business machines after that.