Windows 7 details revealed in October

Microsoft has begun the ramp up to the next version of Windows, with the announcement that it will reveal the first technical details about the product in October.

Windows 7, the codename for the follow up to Windows Vista, is due towards the end of 2009, and the announcement marks the first time Microsoft will disclose any details about the new operating system..

The new information will be released at two Microsoft conferences, the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) on 27th October 27 and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) which follows one week later.

The announcement was made on a new blog which Microsoft has launched as another part of the run up to the Windows 7 launch.

The Engineering Windows 7 blog , which will be led by two senior engineering managers for Windows 7, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky, has been set up to provide a forum to discuss engineering issues around Windows 7.According to the first posting on the blog, feedback with customers and partners will be essential to the development of the OS.

“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,” the post said.

While the blog promises to disclose details about the product, and to reveal some of the processes of how Microsoft will use feedback to guide development, the bloggers have stated that they will not discuss features that may not end up in the final product, as happened with some of the communication around Vista product features.

In July, some details were revealed about a new Microsoft operating system, code-named Midori, that will most likely replace the Windows family, which is being developed to be more suitable for use in Internet-based computing environments.