Is Microsoft already hard at work repeating the history of Longhorn and Windows Vista in terms of overpromising and then underdelivering? Has the Redmond company already started stripping Windows 7 down of the features planned initially? Is DirectX 11 already being scrapped from the nest iteration of the Windows platform? Well, some reports tend to suggest just such a scenario. But is there any truth to this?

Before you jump the gun and end up coming to the wrong conclusions about Windows 7, you have to consider that all reports on the next version of Windows have to be taken with a grain of salt. This simply because Microsoft is as of yet not breathing a single word on Windows 7. This is Steven Sinofsky's way of avoiding a Longhorn/Vista repeat.

Sinofsky is, of course, the Senior Vice President of the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group. And the leader of the Windows 7 project. As such, Sinofsky implemented a new development strategy over at Microsoft, one focused on translucency rather than transparency. This essentially means that the Redmond company will from now on only talk Windows 7, Windows Fiji, Internet Explorer and Windows Live only when it will be ready to.

With Sinofsky what you see is what you get. Nothing more. Nothing less. This is both a source of comfort and frustration at the same time. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft could talk Windows 7 now, and throughout the development process. And have the public focus on each drawback, on every cut feature... or it could simply wait until late in the development process and fully deliver on its promises.

It is the case with Windows 7. Microsoft has failed to confirm specific details about Windows 7. And in any case nowhere did the company even hint that DirectX 11 would be a component of Vista's successor. This was implied more or less through speculation and third parties. At the same time, Microsoft did not even deliver the slightest suggestion that it is cutting anything from Windows 7, let alone a potential DirectX 11.

What's there to cut? Outside of the MinWin kernel, the XPS reader and a new version of the Windows Media Player there are no features officially confirmed for Windows 7. Nor will there be for a long time into the development process. And now Windows 7 M1 is not even a standalone operating system, it has to be installed on top of Windows Vista Service Pack 1.