Windows 7 won't break ties with Vista, goes public in November

In the latest post on the company's Engineering Windows 7 blog , Windows 7 senior engineering manager Steven Sinofsky confirms that maintaining compatibility with Vista applications is high on the Windows 7 to-do list.

"We want to make sure that programs that run on Windows Vista continue to run on Windows 7," Sinofsky wrote. "That's a commitment we have made from the start of the project. As we all know this is perhaps the most critical aspect of delivering a new operating system in terms of compatibility."

Sinofsky also obliquely acknowledged that this goal wasn't achieved in the transition from Windows XP, despite Vista having Microsoft's largest ever beta testing program. "Sometimes we don't do everything we can do and each release we look at how we can test and verify a broader set of software before we release. Beta tests help for sure but lack the systematic rigor we require."

The lukewarm reaction to Vista in the marketplace has led to widespread speculation that Windows 7 would adopt a radically cut-down architecture and try to ditch some of its heritage ties. While the interface may well prove to be different, and some of that compatibility could conceivably be delivered through virtual machines, Sinofsky's comments reinforce that Microsoft isn't ready to cut the Vista apron strings just yet.

Elsewhere in the entry he explicitly rejects the notion of a cut-down Windows architecture: "Some have said that an ecosystem is not the best approach -- that we could do a much better job for customers if we reduce the "surface area" of Windows and support fewer devices, fewer PCs, fewer applications, and less of Windows’ past or legacy. Judging by the variety of views we've seen I think folks desire a lot of choice . . . in reality such a view would result in a radical and ever-shrinking reduction in the choices available for consumers."

Maintaining that compatibility will have to be balanced with another goal for Windows 7: shifting more users from current 32-bit platforms to 64-bit releases. "We've been very clear about our view that 64-bit is a place for developers to spend their energy as that is a transition well underway and a place where we are clearly focused," Sinofsky said.

The blog also confirmed the widely held suspicion that many key Windows 7 technologies and features will be shown off at WinHEC, Microsoft's annual hardware engineering conference, which is being held in Los Angeles in November.

"At WinHEC we have a chance to show the advances in Windows 7 around devices and the hardware ecosystem," Sinofsky wrote. (APC will be attending WinHEC and offering coverage of all the major news from that event.)

Sinofsky dropped a hint that Microsoft might encourage PC vendors to include less 'crapware' on machines that come with Vista pre-installed, writing of discussions with manufacturers. "Together we have been sharing views on ways to provide differentiated  PC experiences, customer feedback on pre-loaded software, and partnering on the end-to-end measurement of the performance of new PCs on key metrics such as boot and shutdown." (Improving boot times  is among the major goals for Windows 7.)

Recent online rumours have suggested that Windows 7 might be released as early as mid-2009, but most market watchers are predicting a 2010 or later release. Microsoft, as ever, has not announced a target release date this early in the development cycle.