In case there were any more doubts left, the Windows boss himself, Steven Sinofsky has come out and re-confirmed what was by now nothing more than common level, the fact that Windows 7 would drop by the end of January 2010. Microsoft is looking at a three year development timetable for the next iteration of Windows, taking into consideration January 30, 2007 as the general availability date for Windows Vista. Sinofsky followed Jim Allchin at the lead of the Windows project, and is responsible not only for Windows 7, but also for additional technologies such as Internet Explorer. So far, Sinofsky has replaced Allchin's transparency philosophy with a new translucent strategy when it comes down to the development of future Windows operating systems.

May 27, 2008 marks the first time that the new Windows Chief discussed Windows 7 publicly, while managing to say little to nothing. It is clear that, at this point in time, Microsoft is only ready to share information about Windows Vista's successor with its closest partners and nothing more. Sinofsky continues to keep all the details about Windows 7 swept under a translucent rug in Redmond, but he did point out that the next version of Windows would be no more than a year and a half away.

"The timing of it depends a lot on what we wanted to achieve, and you've certainly heard us, and we've been very clear, and will continue to say that the next release of Windows, Windows 7, is about three years after the general availability of Windows Vista, and we're committed to that, and we've signed up publicly to do that," Sinofsky stated in an interview for Beyond Binary.

The Windows boss also reinstated Microsoft's commitment to major Windows releases, and pointed to Windows 7 as the next monolithic version of the operating system. "Steven Sinofsky is the senior vice president for the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group - the user experience of Microsoft Windows and Windows Live services," reads an excerpt of Sinofsky's official biography via Microsoft.

"(...)Windows 7 is a major release," stated Christopher Flores, Director Windows Communications. "It's hard to describe any product that is used by millions of people and worked on by thousands of engineers as anything else. That said, the long-term architectural investments we introduced in Windows Vista and then refined for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 will carry forward in Windows 7."