Engineering Windows 7 Blog | Microsoft.com

Over the past week we have seen a little bit of blogosphere activity regarding Windows 7 and batteries, specifically the new Windows 7 message “Considering replacing your battery”. Since this is related to the engineering of Windows 7 we’re going to use this blog to provide an update to people. As we have talk about many times, we have a relentless focus on the quality of Windows 7 and we take seriously any reports we receive that indicate a potential problem that could result in a...

This has been a busy couple of days for a few of us on the team as we had a report of a bug in Windows 7. The specifics of the issue are probably not as important as a discussion over how we will manage these types of situations down the road and so it seems like a good time to provide some context and illustrate our process, using this recent example.

This week a report on a blog described a crashing issue in Windows 7. The steps to reproduce the crash were pretty easy (1) run chkdsk /r...

Today marks an important milestone in the Windows 7 project. The Windows 7 team is proud to share with you that a short while ago we have started to release Windows 7 to PC OEM and manufacturing partners. This means our next major milestone will be the availability of PCs loaded with Windows 7 and store shelves stocked with Windows 7 on October 22, 2009.

This is a milestone we could not have achieved without the broad participation across the PC Ecosystem we have talked so much about on this...

Microsoft has been a global software company for a long time and has always put a lot of effort into engineering our products for a global customer base.  It is also an area where the engineering is complex—probably a lot more complex than many might think—and one where we are always trying to learn and improve.  Building global software is a responsibility for everyone on the team.  We also have feature teams dedicated to developing both global and market specific...

One of the many passions held by Bill Gates is a passion for reading and so his desire to make reading on PCs a fantastic experience has been an effort ongoing for many years. In the 1998 COMDEX show, Bill Gates unveiled ClearType – hard to believe it was that long ago. Back when it was announced, very few of us had LCD monitors and those that did invested several thousand dollars in one that was 15” and 1024x768 (today one like that costs less than $100). The notions of smoothing and...

Delivering excellent audio playback on a PC is one of those “much harder than it looks” technical challenges.  Unlike dedicated audio / video devices, PCs have a lot going on during playback of audio and the playback happens on an incredible array of hardware and software.  Many of you might be familiar with “glitches” that occasionally happen.  In this post, Kristin Carr, a program manager on our Devices and Media team, describes some of the engineering in Windows 7 to...