Mary Jo Foley, writing in her ZDNet blog “An unblinking eye on Microsoft,” recently provided an insider’s scoop into how Microsoft is already applying the lessons it learned from its recent Vista model launch towards the development of its next platform, Windows 7:

First and foremost: Keep Windows architectural changes to a minimum. And secondly, be more predictable (and believable) when it comes to delivery targets.

That’s according to Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President of Windows Product Management, who is chatting this week with press and bloggers about the state of Vista, just about a year after the company released the product to manufacturing.

Nash isn’t apologizing for Microsoft’s decision to introduce User Account Control prompts, default to standard-user mode (instead of administrator) or move the graphics subsystem out of the kernel space — all choices the company made in developing Vista. Nor does he think it was a mistake for Microsoft to delay the final RTM of Vista, resulting in the company missing last year’s lucrative holiday retail season.

Nash said Microsoft had to make the under-the-cover changes it did, for security and performance reasons, to Windows Vista.

“I don’t regret that we made a lot of changes to Vista,” Nash said in an interview on November 14. “But I don’t anticipate that level of architectural change in Windows 7.”

Get the whole story here.

What do you think? Were Vista’s wide-ranging changes a little too ambitious? Or was it good to approach the upgrade on such a comprehensive scale? Sound off in the comments section and let us know what you think.

Note: No updates until next week. To all our readers: Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday!