May 19, 2011 18:21 GMT  ·  By

Work on Windows 8 began long before Windows 7 was ever finalized, at least two years ago.

Confirmation of this came from Renée J. James, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Software and Services Group for Intel which also provided some additional juicy details related to Windows vNext.

James claims that Windows 8 will feature a traditional version for x86 CPUs (sporting the new Windows 7 Mode) as well as an ARM flavor, with the software giant expanding support to Systems on a Chip.

After James’ remarks were picked up by the press, Microsoft denied that the details were accurate. In fact, the Redmond company called the information “factually inaccurate and unfortunately misleading.”

But at least some of the details about Windows 8 turn up not only to be accurate, but verifiable through the words of Microsoft employees.

Here’s something that James said according to Channel Register:

"We've been working with Microsoft on Windows for probably 20 years, this year. We've been their partner for a long time – everybody writes about it, everybody talks about it."

"But what you may not know is that we have an on-site development team in Redmond that actually works deep inside the OS to make sure that the platforms, and the features, and the new instructions – whatever new thing we're inventing – is ready to go at the time of introduction of the latest Microsoft environment."

"We've been working for the last couple of years – very, very focused – on Windows 8. I'm very excited about it. We've been working on it for a long time. There's a lot of exciting new features and things about it that I think are going to be great for users, great for the PC and tablet industry." (emphasis added)

Now, just to be clear, the fact that Windows 8 has been in planning and development before Windows 7 was wrapped up is nothing new, and certainly not news.

Back in March 2009 I wrote this article “Windows 8 Already Cooking, Beyond Windows 7,” after Soni Meinke, a senior program manager in the Windows Server group confirmed that work had already started on Windows 8.

March 2009, that pretty much confirms James’ information about Intel working with Microsoft on Windows 8 for the last two years.

Traditionally, every Windows OS goes through a planning stage. As far as I can tell, planning it’s all that was happening in 2009, with the actual coding starting a tad later, and not until 2010.

But my question is, if Microsoft says that the words of Intel’s exec were “factually inaccurate and unfortunately misleading” while it’s clear that at least a portion of the details were in fact genuine, could more of the info also be accurate?