Windows 7 – What Is The Price Of Silence?

We are starting to learn a lot more about Windows 7 and what we can look forward to, but until people play with the build they got from PDC and WinHEC for a while we won't really know how well the folks working on Windows 7 have really done.  Microsoft kindly gave me access to the M3 build as a Feature Community last week and I will be playing with the build extensively.

My major concern about Windows 7 has always been the lock down of information that was implemented. Not only has information been prevented from being shared, but as a result we are  unable to provide direction and feedback on the many new features we have learned about this week and last.  Any feedback we give now on the M3 I fear is much too late to make any meaningful changes since we were just told at the WinHEC keynote that a beta will be here early next year.  Has Microsoft designed Windows 7 features in a vacuum and will that hurt Windows 7 as a result?

Lets take look at one example, Bitlocker To Go, Bitlocker To Go is a new feature that enables users on Windows 7 to encrypt  USB storage devices and assign them a passphrase. A very useful feature for securing data. In my quick playing with this feature it works great, but currently has a big glaring design hole.  In the current builds it appears is susceptible to brute force type attacks.  When you try to mount the device you get the prompt to put in a passphrase and you can continue to put in bad passphrases with no apparent ramifications for as long as you want. 

Now, If you were to do this same thing on a Kensington Data Traveler Secure you would get several attempts and the device would wipe. A bit extreme for some, but a very useful security feature when you are talking about transporting sensitive data.  Why does Bitlocker not have a “Lock out” feature?…my guess is that Microsoft simply didn’t think of it or the design of Bitlocker To Go means that this isn’t possible.  This to me is just one example of designing a feature in a vacuum where it may not end up meeting most peoples needs.

I do think Windows 7 will be a success, but given they now have a very stable base in Windows Vista and an established driver model it would be really hard not to be a success.  The real test of Windows 7 should be how well these new feature are designed and if we find more glaring holes like this one will be able to convince those in power that the cone of silence must be lifted much earlier on the next major release.

What do you think?

Follow Me on Twitter