Back from the PDC…next up, WinHEC
This has been an amazingly special week for the Windows 7 team. We’re all incredibly appreciative of the reception of Windows 7 this week at the PDC. Thank you!
All of us on the team have been closely watching the news reports and blogs of those who have been “kicking the tires” of the Windows 7 pre-beta. The reception has been fantastic and we’re humbled by the excitement and enthusiasm for the release. We know we have a ton of work ahead of us to get to beta and then the path to RTM, and the reception has definitely given us an extra special motivation (though we were already pretty motivated).
Next week is our conference dedicated to the hardware partners in the ecosystem we have talked about. Called WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference), we’ll have another series of sessions and keynotes. Jon DeVaan will be taking the lead as we dive into the details of “fundamentals” and the work we are doing with some of the many partners involved in Windows 7. WinHEC also has a strong focus on Windows Server 2008 R2 (the server built off the Windows 7 kernel). These sessions will all be available online as well.
So with all the shows we’re taking a short break from the blog as the folks that do the presenting are also the writers (myself included).
Below is a list of all the sessions on Windows 7 from the PDC. Please take some time to have a look as the information is very detailed for sure. How about using the comments on this post to ask questions of the sessions that you’d like to see more details on down the road? That would be really helpful for us to target our posts.
Many of you have written asking about the beta and how to sign up or download it. The best source for information on that will be the site http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7 which our product marketing team owns and will keep up to date as the beta information is available. Also note that the Windows Vista blog which is where you will see announcements / news has been updated to reflect the inclusion of Windows 7. This blog is now known as the Windows Blog.
One of the very fun moments for me at the PDC was an “Open Space” session on the floor of the “Big Room” which was an open-microphone discussion. Channel9 captured this and might be a fun watch. See http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Steven-Sinofsky-at-the-PDC2008-Open-Space/
For those of you interested in the Windows 7 APIs and what’s new for developers there is an overview document that you might find valuable. See Windows 7 Developer Guide on MSDN.
Thank you very much for all the emails you have sent. I always share them with the team and really appreciate it.
See you on this blog soon enough!
--Steven
