Can Windows 7 benefit students?

From what we've seen of Windows 7, we've got multi-touch features and a new taskbar. Obviously because of the new way that Microsoft (*ahem* Sinfosky) is keeping the Windows family of products close to its chest, we don't really know what's going on with it, or what it can offer. The main problem, from a development point of view, is because we don't know the core API's and the "power of Windows" yet, development becomes increasingly difficult.

Needless to say, Windows 7 is a good couple of years away at leasthas a while to go before it's released, a year at least, so there's still plenty of time to worry about it. Yet those in university at the moment who learn Java, C# and .NET3 may be ostracised from the employment

market because they haven't kept up to date with the latest programming knowledge. So not only do the developers suffer, as they cannot create new or updated versions of their products to work with the next version of the Windows operating system yet, students are being pushed away from the table also.

Long has there been controversy over how Microsoft, and other major software corporations handle data releases, this doesn't seem set to change. However the one thing Microsoft could do (as they did with the .NET Framework 3.0) was release the separate development tools included in Windows, before the actual release of Windows is distributed.

Maybe we should just all turn to Linux anyway - it seems to be the most applicable platformto use at the moment, and it's hardly going to die out any time soon.