It’s probably inappropriate of me to squawk that the posts over at Microsoft’s Engineering Windows 7 blog often bury important stuff in thousands of words of inpenetrable, unadorned text–the blog is aimed at developers, not simple folks like myself. Windows 7 chief Steve Sinofsky has a 2500-word post today and for me, at least, the key tidbit is something that Sinfosky never quite states explicitly: Microsoft plans to release only one Release Candidate test version of Windows 7 before wrapping up development of the OS and shipping it to PC manufacturers and users. That would seem to suggest that the company thinks that the upgrade is in solid shape, and that it’s far more likely to ship it surprisingly soon than surprisingly late.

I still can’t quite believe there’s a chance you’ll be able to buy Windows 7 in the summer of 2009. But perhaps Microsoft will be done with the OS by then, so that PCs bearing it will be on store shelves comfortably in time for back-to-school sales.

Sinofksy says that Microsoft is currently looking at all the feedback it’s gotten from Windows 7 beta testers and figuring out what changes it can reasonably implement. I mostly like W7–it’s already the version of Windows I use most often–but there are a few things about it that I sure hope Microsoft refines, such as the confusing way HomeGroup networking doesn’t seem to let you explicitly change a PC’s HomeGroup, and assigns each HomeGroup a password which you can’t change.

It’s no surprise that Sinofksy has no news in his post about when the Release Candidate will arrive, or when Microsoft expects the final version to show up. As usual, every rational Windows user should have the same take on such matters–which is to hope that Microsoft errs on the side of moving slowly and carefully and releasing an OS that works well right out of the box. (You gotta wonder whether anyone in Redmond ever kicks him or herself for not having worked on Vista for another six months, especially after the company missed the 2006 holiday season anyhow.)

 
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