Vista was finally generally available to enterprise customers in late November 2006, while consumer availability came two months later in January 2007.
Of course, Vista was a "major" update to Windows. Shipping in early 2007, it followed Windows XP by nearly six years.
Windows 7, despite significant changes made to the system's kernel to make it smaller and faster, is viewed by many observers as a relatively minor update from Vista. As a result, it could take less testing and require fewer fixes since at its core is Vista's now well-tested code that has been in commercial use for two years already.
It might make more sense to compare Windows 7's testing and release cycle to Vista Service Pack 1 (Vista SP1), which shipped to end users in mid-March last year.
So beta testing took a little more than two months, about the same amount of time envisioned for Windows 7. Beyond the beta, RC testing took from early December 2007 to early February 2008 – also about two months.
It should be no surprise then that the two processes are so close in timing. Both projects were headed by the same executive.
Windows chief Sinofsky took over the Windows program after Vista shipped, and has guided the development of Windows 7, as well as two service packs for Vista, SP1 released this time last year, and SP2 just entering RC stage this week.
Last-Minute Changes
Sinofsky, who previously headed Microsoft Office development, has a historically different take on product development. He prefers to have short beta tests at the end of the development process.
An article that accompanies the blog post cites a list of fixes and updates that Microsoft developers have made to the code based on beta test feedback.
For instance, developers have speeded up the opening time for the Start menu. Additionally, they have added Alt/Tab window support in a user interface tool to help users called Aero Peek. Perhaps most notably, Microsoft is changing the way Windows 7 handles User Account Control activities.
"Most of the blog [post] talked about user interface stuff so what's left to do on some of the enterprise features is unknown," Silver added, describing his experiences with the beta as "pretty solid."
