Of all the people in Microsoft we’d like to hear more from, Windows chief Steven Sinofsky is by far the quietest and most secretive.  That was until a few days ago when he suddenly appeared on Twitter, or did he?  The account wasn’t the man himself, being clear that “Oh, I’m not ‘the’ Steven Sinofsky by the way. He’s got a little project to focus on for now.”

Microsoft acted swiftly and uncharacteristically politely by tweeting the individual behind the account saying “@StevenSinofsky please see guidelines on parody and impersonation. Your account is not following them them and has been reported.” before eventually taking a slightly softer tone when replying to another user about the account.  ” … all in good humor, too much mail from confused people as account name a bit too real. follow the rules is all we ask .”

The incident, as reported by NeoWin, has now been resolved with the account being renamed @FakeSinofsky but his promise of free Windows on ARM tablets for all TouchPad owners was both interesting and amusing, both because of the dwindling support TouchPad owners who are still using WebOS are finding, but also because anybody in this position is likely to think that WebOS is better.

Twitter has a great many fake accounts for celebrities and notable people of which Steven Sinofky is just one of the most recent, and Twitter has strict rules for such accounts though it does allow them.  So long as people know that an account is fake there’s really no harm that can be done and it’s all in a bit of fun.  It is reassuring that Microsoft’s legal people haven’t stepped in and taken a harder line on this occasion as might have been expected.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, a great many people online have been criticising Sinofsky for remaining so quiet and not coming forward with the answers to the questions they have been asking about Windows 8.  This could be because at the time those answers didn’t exist, it could have been that Microsoft needed and wanted to steer the dialogue in a certain direction (which is the most likely) or it could be that they didn’t care or want to (unlikely this one).

The sad news though is that HP TouchPad owners won’t be receiving a new Windows on ARM tablet.  As a TouchPad owner myself I can only say Damn!

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In the inaugural post to the new Building Windows 8 Blog, Windows chief and Microsoft Senior Vice President Steven Sinofsky has begun the discussion about Windows 8 by stating “We’ve been hard at work designing and building Windows 8, and today we want to begin an open dialog with those of you who will be trying out the pre-release version over the coming months.”

He goes on to talk about legacy problems, the expectations and issues facing the company’s customers and says that “Windows 8 Reimagines Windows” which is a very bold, and an equally cryptic message.  Windows 8 will be formally unveiled at Microsoft’s BUILD conference in California on September 13th.  It’s not yet know when the beta will begin, but form Sinofsky’s comments it will be before the end of the year.

You can read the full story at our sister site Windows8News.

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In the inaugural post of the new “Building Windows 8 Blog“, Windows chief and Microsoft Senior Vice-President Steven Sinofsky has started the discussion about Windows 8 with the company’s BUILD conference, where WIndows 8 will be unveiled, just around the corner.

In the post he hints that a beta of the new OS will be released in the “coming months”…

We’ve been hard at work designing and building Windows 8, and today we want to begin an open dialog with those of you who will be trying out the pre-release version over the coming months.

He goes on to talk about the potential legacy issues surrounding the new OS, with rumours still flying that it will ditch support for older hardware and software in the name of stability and security.

Windows 8 reimagines Windows. That’s a big statement and one that we will return to throughout this blog. It is also important to know that we’re 100% committed to running the software and supporting the hardware that is compatible with over 400 million Windows 7 licenses already sold and all the Windows 7 yet to be sold.

…before going on to talk about the secrecy surrounding the product so far.

We’ve heard people express frustration over how little we’ve communicated so far about Windows 8. We’ve certainly learned lessons over the years about the perils of talking about features before we have a solid understanding of our ability to execute.

This all looks then like Microsoft are on track for a September 2012 release for Windows 8, which would enable hardware manufacturers to hit the ground running with the all-important back to school/college sales period, and give them plenty of time to gear up for the big Christmas holiday sales.

Sinofsky, who is renowned for his secrecy, goes on to talk about that secrecy and the openness that he promised about WIndows 8 going forward.

We know that blogging about Windows 8 will bring out the passionate opinions of many people, including members of our team. As a team we’re all going to participate—many of us will author posts, and all of us will read and take note of your comments on this blog. We’ll participate in a constructive dialog with you. We’ll also make mistakes and admit it when we do. It is almost certain that something will hit a nerve, with the team or with the community, or both, in the blog posts or in the product, or both. In any case, we’ll work hard to have constructive conversations with you, share the data, and, when the situation calls for it, make thoughtful changes.

It is interesting his comment “Windows 8 Reimagines Windows“.  Nobody yet knows quite what this means though there have been enough rumours flying around so far to give us educated guesses.  One is to the aforementioned jettisoning of legacy support, instead shunting this into virtual machines based on locked-down Windows kernels.

So far the only parts of Windows 8 that Microsoft have demonstrated, is a copy running on a 1GHz ARM processor and the new tablet interface.  Both are impressive but only a small part of the overall ecosystem coming.  So far as the rest of the operating system goes he says…

Computing is much more focused on applications and on people than on the operating system itself or the data. These changes in the landscape motivate the most significant changes to Windows, from the chips to the experience.  Rest assured we’ve thoughtfully engineered changes across the full range of Windows capabilities. But this presents us a challenge in deciding where to start the dialog.

This again implies that there are major and very significant announcements coming next month.  We’ll keep you fully updated here at Windows 8 News on the future of Windows.  The BUILD conference is in California from September 13th.

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There can be no doubt that since Steven Sinofsky took over as the head of Windows at Microsoft in 2009, the development programme for the operating system has become much more secretive.

Under Bill Veghte’s watch the Vista programme was very open, many argue too open which is perhaps why Sinofsky has taken the approach he has.  During the Vista beta (and a fairly open alpha too), which went on for approximately 18 months, there were numerous builds including many that I remember clearly were utterly unstable.  Also many features that Microsoft announced for Vista, including the much heralded WinFS file system, never made the final release.

When Sinofsky too over he brought with him the secrecy he’d insisted upon when running Microsoft Office.  Suddenly the only beta that was available was a feature-complete, near final version.  After that we had a release candidate and then the finished product.

Many beta-testers, including myself, were vocally critical at the time of Sinofsky’s approach.  “Why have a technical beta if you’re only going to turn it into a bug hunt” was something I said with some frequency, and I wasn’t alone.  Many beta-testers joined in with this chorus because with the XP and Vista beta programmes we’d all been used to a far more open programme with much more communication from Microsoft, and genuine input into the final version of the product.  I can say that I contributed directly to a feature change in Vista, and I’m very happy about that.  I can’t say that about Windows 7.

This left many people feeling that, with more input Windows 7 could have been far better, and you’ll get no argument from me on this.  The question needs to be asked though that if this had happened would Microsoft have been able to get Windows 7 delivered on their strict three year timescale?  You can assume here they probably wouldn’t.

There are potential benefits to the secrecy as well.  Many people were extremely disappointed with the features that never made it into Windows Vista.  With Windows 7 there was none of that, no pulled features that we knew about and no product that in the end would have disappointed fans and customers.  Regards getting feedback from customers, it can be argued that this is what the time since the release of the previous version of Windows is for.

I’m now looking forward to the Windows 8 beta.  I don’t know when I’ll get it, but Microsoft certainly seem keen on my getting a copy as early as possible, which is good news as I’m a Windows MVP.  In some ways its been frustrating not having a copy already but what would I have done with it?  When you’re in my position as an author a copy that’s feature complete is the best thing to have but you need access to the code in enough time to get a book written which can take up to six months.  As an editor on Windows8News it would have been nice to get it earlier and as a tech enthusiast I couldn’t get it early enough.

I’m curious how you feel though.  While Windows 8 has seen a great many more leaks than Windows 7 did (almost all of which in the light of the recent tablet interface announcement from Microsoft now seem trivial), which approach from Microsoft do you prefer?  Open and involved or secretive and locked-down?

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Several rumours concerning the Windows 7 RTM (Release to Marketing) jammed the internet in the past week. Some people (including myself) thought that Microsoft has finally signed off an RTM build with the string: 6.1.7600.16384.win7_rtm.090710-1945.

However yesterday (the day Windows 7 was expected to RTM) Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc, mentioned in The Windows Blog that the Windows 7 RTM is still not ready and hasn’t been signed off. Instead, the RTM is expected to be ‘completed’ by the second half of this month.

…when we do a specific build internally of Windows 7 we have an extensive step-by-step validation process to ensure quality. This process takes time. Just because a single build may have “leaked” it does not signal the completion of a milestone such as RTM.

The RTM is the final process of the development of Windows 7, where it will be distributed to Microsoft partners (including software vendors) to create their final images of the Windows and manufacture computers and hardware that support it. I am very excited about the RTM as it’s the last step before the GA (General Availability) of Windows 7, where it will hit the market in October 22^nd. But it isn’t a small step, rather the beginning of a new “process” for Windows 7 as Steven Sinofsky stated in the Engineering Windows 7 blog in May.

Once the Windows is complete, it’ll be available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers and VL (Volume License) Customers within a few weeks after its announcement. As for now, those interested can continue using the RC (Release Candidate) of Windows 7.  If you’d like to install the leaked build 7600, make sure that it has the exact hash codes listed in “CONFIRMED – Windows 7 RTM, Server 2008, and Office 2010 Beta Leaked” to avoid getting malware. You can use a program such as FileAlyzer to obtain the checksum of the downloaded file.

Last but not least, the leaked build 7600 has:

• a big jump in build string numbers (from 7200 to 7600!)
• the “setup.exe” digitally signed
• no build string information on the desktop

This made many believe that it is the RTM release, as seen from one of the comments on the post “Update on Windows 7 RTM”. Mike Ybarra, a Microsoft employee, explained in reply to the comment:

Build numbers change all the time and is related to a number of different things.

When we release a build we then have hundreds of ISOs to validate and so it takes time to go through all of these checks and balances to ensure the code meets our broad quality bar.  This is all part of the “RTM” process.  What we can tell you is that we have not released Windows 7 to manufacturing and our process is still underway. Any leaked builds out “there” could very well include a virus, malware or other harmful exploits.

I personally will stick with the release candidate and don’t mind waiting another few weeks.

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Microsoft have appointed 20 year veteran Steven Sinofsky as the new head of the Windows division, having responsibility for Windows OS, Windows Live and Internet Explorer.  Steve previously was responsible for developing Windows 7 and his success with delivering Windows 7 on time has led to the promotion.  Not only is the product ready for launch, it has a good balance of new features and updates that won’t leave existing users banging their keyboards in anger.

Steve has a very good track record of delivering big launches on time, and his next big task will be to ensure that Windows 7′s launch won’t be the embarrassment that Windows Vista was.  Windows 7 is already building up a lot of momentum and the various pre-order offers (ends tomorrow for US&CA!), the Windows 7 Upgrade programs and the October 22nd launch, will ensure that Windows 7 sales have a lot of momentum going into the vital Christmas buying period.

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The introduction of the User Account Control feature in Windows Vista was a controversial move that backfired quite a bit on Microsoft. Not necessarily because it was a bad feature but because many users felt that it was annoying the hell out of them. Most experts agree that UAC is increasing a computer system’s security which is obviously a good thing. They do also agree on the fact that Microsoft should have made some changes to the way UAC behaves in Windows Vista to make it less annoying.

Enter Windows 7. Microsoft made changes to the way the User Account Control in Windows 7 behaves which should reduce the frustration that some users felt in Windows Vista. Microsoft employees have posted about UAC various times on the Engineering Windows 7 blog, check out the links below for an overview:

• Ben Fathi – User Account Control
• Unknown – User Account Control (UAC) – quick update
• John DeVaan – Update on UAC
• John DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky – UAC Feedback and Follow-Up

The last Microsoft employee to have his say about UAC is Mark Russinovich who wrote the article Inside Windows 7 User Account Control for the Technet Magazine which looks at UAC in Windows 7 from a more technical point of view.

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A couple of days ago when I published my first “what’s missing from Windows 7″ article, there was an interesting reply from po134 who said…

For me it’s all about acessibility (I’m legally blind). Even though high-dpi improved it is still a constant seting for all your programs and cannot be set on a per-aplication basis (like the “compatibility mode” for example) and some older programs with absolute positionning really don’t respond well with high-dpi so I find myself forced to disable it for a few program, then log out and log back in again …

Back in January I emailed Microsoft Windows and Windows Live Engineering group Senior Vice President (mouthful), Steven Sinofsky about how this setting works for visually impaired users.  I was wondering why accessibility options weren’t available during the initial install when your screen is, unless you’re already upgrading from within a high resolution from XP or Vista, set at a much lower resolution.

The problem that we currently face is that Windows 7 will, quite sensibly, set itself to the native resolution of your flat screen monitor during install.  This doesn’t help people who are blind or partially sighted though then find the new tools that can enlarge text and other items on your screen by up to 150% (click the thumbnail to the left to view this).

I received a very prompt and detailed reply to this which does actually make a lot of sense as things stand currently.

Steven Sinofsky wrote back…

The technology for us to deliver accessibility during initial setup just isn’t available at this time.  The diversity of the PC hardware ecosystem makes it something we are not able to reliably deliver across the board.  It is something we are aware of and are working towards.

The challenge we have is that for a majority of folks the problem we need to solve is making sure Windows is running in a resolution that matches the native resolution of the monitor.  For the sighted, failing to do so produces a fuzzy image or an image that is stretched/squished.  We’re not trying to get away from anything, but just balancing the needs of many different users of Windows.

So clearly this is something that Microsoft have already given some time to and, hopefully in the next couple of years they’ll be able to find a way to work things through for visually impaired users.

Regards po134′s specific point, Microsoft have built a certain degree of visual accessibility into packages such as Office for a while now, but there’s still lots of room for improvement and it’s long past time that other software houses followed suit.

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To put it short: Steven Sinofsky confirmed that there will be no Windows 7 Beta 2 which means that the next official release will be the Windows 7 Release Candidate. Rumors that have been came to light yesterday suggest a release in early April for the Windows 7 Release Candidate.

The RTM release of Windows 7 is expected in the third quarter of 2009, most suggesting a release in early October which would indicate a public availability in the fourth quarter of 2009.

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WinHec 2008 just started and the keynote is available in three different quality streams that can be watched online. The keynote is available as a 100K, 300K or 750K video stream. The Keynote begins with a few information for the attendees of the WinHec 2008 conference and an introduction of the keynotes that are going to follow: The video contains both the keynotes of Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan and has a total playtime of 1:18 hours.

The keynotes contain some interesting information about Windows 7. One of the first presentations is comparing the boot time of Windows Vista with Windows 7. The test is running on identical hardware. Windows 7 is loaded several seconds before Windows Vista has loaded thanks to a few new features and optimizations such as:

• Increased parallel device initialization
• Less data read from disk
• Start Pearl / Sound changes
• Many detailed optimizations and enhancements

Windows memory consumption was improved in Windows 7 by making it independent of the number of open windows.

Microsoft was demonstrating the effect of opening lots of windows on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Windows Vista began to throw error messages after reaching a certain amount of open windows while Windows 7 was able to handle them without difficulties.

Another area of improvement was done to the power consumption of the operating system. Many users had the feeling that Windows 7 was using more power than previous Windows operating systems. Microsoft was demonstrating the power consumption of Windows Vista and Windows 7 on two identical laptops running a video DVD.

The Windows 7 laptop was able to last about one hour longer than the laptop running Windows Vista and the minimum gain is said to be 11% which should equal about 20 minutes of additional playback time. They are demoing some new tools to analyze the computer’s battery usage to fix errors that reduce battery life of the laptop.

Steve Sinofsky is demoing a lot of devices and how they interact with Windows 7, for example a Nokia N95 8GB, Logitech camera or Bluetooth 2.1 devices. One of the most impressive parts of the keynote is the demonstration of an Asus eeePC with 1GB Ram, 16 GB SSD hard drive and an Atom Dual Core 1.6 processor running Windows 7 as well as a gaming PC running Intel’s new Core i7 quad core processor and a Nvidia 280 GTS X2 graphics card running a Crysis demo on Windows 7.

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Steven Sinofsky sat down with some convention attendees for a Q&A session. An interesting aspects of this discussion was if it would be possible to install Windows 7 on a notebook with touch capabilities (yes). Windows 7 boot time was another interesting topic. Microsoft changed the way services work in Windows. In Windows Vista services could be set to automatic, manual or disabled. Windows 7 introduces event based services which start if an event triggers them which has an effect on boot time.

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I was a bit disappointed with the information that were presented in article form on the Engineering Windows 7 blog since its creation. It looked more like a clever Microsoft ploy to divert the attention away from Windows 7 by feeding the masses information about the creation process that would not specifically mention anything new about Windows 7. These posts were interesting from an engineering point of view but did not provide end users with any new information about Windows 7 itself, be it new features, requirements or planning.

Today one article for the first time directly mentioned Windows 7 and some of the options that Microsoft was considering in the development phase. The article is entitled “Reflecting on a few recent threads…” and it is symptomatic that the discussion has been kicked of by commentators of the blog rather than by the team itself. It honors them on the other hand that they read all the comments on their blog and react on them.

The new article about Windows 7 is basically talking about three suggestions – or requests – by some of the users who wrote comments in the blog. They are Profile-based setups, Out of Box Experience – “OOBE” and Windows Features.

Profile-based setups

Users have suggested that Windows 7 would offer the user a way to configure it for a specific use. Specific uses are for example gaming, business use or casual use. The comment by Steven Sinofsky was that while there were times that Windows was used for one specific purpose it usually was not. Instead of walking this road they took a look at ways to improve the performance of the system and gives an example about the indexing service and its low-priority I/O APIs.

The desktop PC (or laptop) is different because there is only a single PC and the roles are not as well defined. Only in the rarest cases is that PC dedicated to a single purpose. And as Mike in product planning blogged, the reality is that we see very few PCs that run only a specific piece of software and in nearly every study we have ever done, just about every PC runs at least one piece of software that other people do not run. So we should take away from this the difficulty in even labeling a PC as being role specific. Now there are role-specific times when using a PC, and for that the goal of an OS is to adapt well in the face of changing workloads. As just one example of this in Windows Vista, consider the work on making the indexer a low priority activity using the new low-priority I/O APIs. I know some have mentioned that this is “something I always turn off” but the reality is that there is an upfront cost and then the ongoing cost of indexing is indeed very low. And this is something we have made significant improvements in for Desktop Search 4.0 (released as a download) and in Windows 7. The reality is that a general purpose OS should adjust to the workloads asked of it. We know things are not perfect, and we know many of you (particularly gamers) are looking for every single potential ounce of performance. But we also know that the complexity and fragility introduced by trying to “outsmart” core system services often overshadows the performance improvements we see across the broadest sampling of customers. There’s a little bit of “mythbusters” we could probably embark on so — how about sharing the systematic results you have achieved and we can address those in comments?

Out of Box Experience – “OOBE”

So our context for the out of box experience would be that we don’t want to introduce complexity there, where customers are least interested in dealing with it as they want to get to the excitement of using their new PC. I think of it a bit like the car dealers who won’t hand you the keys to your car until you sit and watch a DVD about the car and then get a guided tour of the car—if you’re like me you’re screaming “give me the keys and let me out of here”. We think PC buyers are pretty much like that and our research confirms that around the world.

Windows Features

This is the part of the blog where Steven mentions that the development team is considering increasing to increase the features and programs that a user can remove after installing Windows 7. This would be the usual Add / Remove System Components dialog where that could happen.

For Windows 7, many have asked for us to make this list longer and have more features in it. This is something we are strongly considering for Windows 7 as we think it is consistent with the design goals of “choice and control” that you have seen us talk about here and quite a bit with Internet Explorer 8.0 beta 2.

Strongly considering does not mean it will be integrated. It would be very nice if they would do allow users to get rid of some of the features and programs in Windows 7 that are never used by them as long as they do not have dependencies with other features or applications that are used.

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Just as Microsoft has intended it to be the Windows 7 blog run by two key figures of the Windows 7 development team has become one of the central information for information about the upcoming Microsoft operating system. The regular posts give insight into the development process, the development team and decision process but fail to deliver new information about the operating system itself.

It could be seen as a clever ploy by Microsoft to keep the news hungry blogosphere and crowd at bay by taking control of the Windows 7 news flow. Today’s post over at the blog is entitled Windows 7 Approach to System Performance, a much smaller article than the previous ones. Steven Sinofsky is again explaining theoretical and practical concepts that played a role in the Windows 7 development without mentioning any system requirements of the upcoming Windows 7 system.

It is nevertheless a good read from an engineering standpoint. He lists some of the metrics that the Windows 7 team is tracking during development including memory usage, cpu utilization and boot / shutdown / resume / standby times. He mentions criteria that they apply at the end of the milestones before they go into beta which have to be met and that they won’t ship the product if those criteria are not met.

We have criteria that we apply at the end of our milestones and before we go to beta and we won’t ship without broadly meeting these criteria. Sometimes these criteria are micro-benchmarks (page faults, processor utilization, working set, gamer frame rates) and other times they are more scenario based and measure time to complete a task (clock time, mouse clicks). We do these measurements on a variety of hardware platforms (32-bit or 64-bit; 1, 2, 4GB of RAM; 5400 to 7200 RPM or solid-state disks; a variety of processors, etc.) Because of the inherent tradeoffs in some architectural approaches, we often introduce conditional code that depends on the type of hardware on which Windows is running.

He also mentions that some users, usually the technical inclined prefer choice and customization, that some users want more eye candy while others prefer to go back to a Windows 2000 like experience.

..there are limits to what we can provide and at the same time provide a reliable “platform” that customers and developers can count on and is robust and manageable for a broad set of customers. But of course within a known context (within your home or within a business running a known set of software) it will always be possible to take advantage of the customization and management tools Windows has to offer to tune the experience

In conclusion Steven manages to provide some insight into yet another area of development while at the same time failing to provide any factual information about Windows 7.

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The Engineering Windows 7 blog is taking up full speed supplying the news hungry web community with new information about the coming Microsoft operating system. The last article took a look at the internal development structure of Windows 7 while the new article is about measuring the scale of a release.

Steven is taking a loot at various customer classes, their expectations and understanding of major and minor operating system releases. This is another theoretical article that does not contain news about Windows 7 per se but is a good read to understand the thinking structure of the development process.

Customers like End-Users, IT Professionals or Developers have all a different understanding and perspective in judging a release as minor or major. To say it blunt: It’s a major release for end-users if they go out and buy it. The problem with this line of though is that it is actually Microsoft’s classification of an end-user. End-Users themselves do not think in those terms usually, many probably cannot even name the operating system that they are using right now. And why should they..

Pleasing all customers could be difficulty and Steven talks about finding a balance to please everyone.

The key is always a balance. We can have big changes for all customers if we prepare all the necessary folks to work through the change. We can have small changes have a big impact if they are the right changes at the right time, and those will get recorded over time as a major release.

The article seems to hint that Windows 7 might be a minor release, a Windows Vista R2, and not the new shiny Microsoft operating system we all hoped to see.

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A few days ago we mentioned the new blog called Engineering Windows 7 which was run by two core members of the Windows 7 development team who promised to update the general public on Windows 7 news. Most likely in an effort to reduce the amount of rumors circulating the Internet and getting more control on the news flow.

Steven Sinofsky published a very long post today which contains interesting information about the Windows 7 team structure of the development team.

Microsoft is using so called feature teams of which there are 25 currently contributing to the development of Windows 7. The teams average about 40 developers which would mean a core development crew of around 1000 developers for Windows 7.

In general a feature team encompasses ownership of combination of architectural components and scenarios across Windows. “Feature” is always a tricky word since some folks think of feature as one element in the user-interface and others think of the feature as a traditional architectural component (say TCP/IP). Our approach is to balance across scenarios and architecture such that we have the right level of end-to-end coverage and the right parts of the architecture. One thing we do try to avoid is separating the “plumbing” from the “user interface” so that teams do have end-to-end ownership of work (as an example of that, “Find and Organize” builds both the indexer and the user interface for search).

He goes on to describe the exact composition of a feature team:

A feature team represents three core engineering disciplines of software development engineers (sde or dev), software development engineers in test (sdet or test, sorry but I haven’t written a job description externally), and program managers (pm)….

We talk about these three disciplines together because we create feature teams with n developers, n testers, and 1/2n program managers. This ratio is pretty constant across the team. On average a feature team is about 40 developers across the Windows 7 project.

This means that to the 1000 developers 1000 testers and 500 program managers are working on Windows 7. Now those are numbers calculated from the numbers given in the article. Those are also only the development numbers.

Several core members work across the entire product, those are the writers that create the documentations, manuals and websites related to Windows 7, members who do customer research and select features, designers who produce a consistent design and members who perform research and usability tests.

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Windows 7 News! There is finally a sign of life, an official that is, from Microsoft about Windows 7. Microsoft kicked of the Engineering Windows 7 blog which is run by two senior engineering managers for the Windows 7 product. The interesting aspect of this specific Windows 7 blog is that it is maintained and run by Microsoft employees that are deeply involved in the creation of Windows 7 and that it aims for a two-way communication instead of just reports without interaction.

We strongly believe that success for Windows 7 includes an open and honest, and two-way, discussion about how we balance all of these interests and deliver software on the scale of Windows. We promise and will deliver such a dialog with this blog.

Two events for developers have been mentioned in their initial blog post where Microsoft will provide “in-depth technical information about Windows 7″ and that the blog will inform interested users with regular posts about behind the scene developments. The two events mentioned are PDC (Professional Developers Conference) on October 27 and WinHec (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) a week later. Seems we have to wait two more months before we finally get detailed information about the Windows 7 plattform.

The last paragraph is especially interesting and comments on the flow of news since the first announcement of Windows 7. Microsoft is trying to gain control of the discussion and communication about Windows 7 which is understandable. Rumors have been filling the void space that Microsoft left by not talking to anyone outside about Windows 7 and it’s time to control the information flow as we are slowly seeing the finish line in sight.

They also mention that they want to “make sure not to set expectations around the release that end up disappointing you” which was a major error Microsoft made during Windows Vista development.

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