Microsoft last night launched a new blog entitled Engineering Windows 7--E7 for short. For the time being, the blog is going light on "the wow," with an image-less blue and white design as straight forward as the blog's name implies.
E7 is also a bit sparse on the content front at the moment too, with two posts, including a maiden message about commenting guidelines and a second which introduces the blog's mission statement.
Microsoft has told the blogosphere it will reveal more about its next operating system, Windows 7, on 27 October.
Windows lovers ahead of two “significant events” where it will dish the dirt on W7, its forthcoming OS based on the Vista kernel.
Developers are invited along to get the skinny on Microsoft’s Windows ecosystem this Autumn at the Professional Developers Conference on 27 October and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference a week later, where MS will “provide in-depth technical information” on the operating system.
Redmond has also, once again, admitted that it needs to be more transparent with its customers.
“We, as a team, definitely learned some lessons about ‘disclosure’ and how we can all too easily get ahead of ourselves in talking about features before our understanding of them is solid,” said head of Windows and Windows Live engineering Steven Sinofsky and Windows core OS division wonk Jon DeVaan, both of whom apparently co-authored the blog post.
“Our intent with Windows 7 and the pre-release communication is to make sure that we have a reasonable degree of confidence in what we talk about when we do talk.”
The pair added that they feel that it’s their “responsibility” to not cause “strategic confusion” among Microsoft's army of partners and customers “who care deeply and have much invested in the evolution of Windows”.
Microsoft’s also claiming to be in a caring/sharing kinda mood: “Starting from the first days of developing Windows 7, we have committed as a team to ‘promise and deliver’. That’s our goal – share with you what we’re going to get done, why we’re doing it, and deliver it with high quality and on time.”
Hmm, Redmond shipping a product on time. That’s a quaint notion, don’t you think?
So, the blog – which is undoubtedly heavily edited by a team of PRs – could serve as a useful stick to beat Microsoft with if it fails to deliver the goods on time and transparently.
Microsoft has continued to insist that Windows 7 won't be available to customers until the start of 2010. But expectations are rising that it will make a crash landing in the second half of 2009.
For now, Microsoft remains tight-lipped and focused on re-marketing its unloved Vista OS. El Reg even received an invite from the software multinational this morning in which it offers your reporter the chance to “explore the new world of Windows”.
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