Microsoft’s Windows 7 blog, titled ‘Egineering Windows 7’, is now live with the first post up for the world to read. Senior managers on Windows 7, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky, will be taking the reins of the blog. With Windows 7 looking set for release in late 2009, consumers will be able to follow the operating systems progress from the eyes of the development team.

In their first post DeVaan and Sinofsky wrote, “With this blog we’re opening up a two-way discussion about how we are making Windows 7. Windows has all the challenges of every large scale software project—picking features, designing them, developing them, and delivering them with high quality. Windows has an added challenge of doing so for an extraordinarily diverse set of customers.”

According to the blog, since the release of Windows Vista, there has been 18 months worth of work on creating Windows 7. That would mean that by the end of 2009, there would only have been 30 odd months of work on the product. It’s a short turn around time by Microsoft’s standards, but if they have learnt anything recently, it’s that continually delaying a product (Windows Vista) can seriously effect the products reputation.

In fact, the blog went as far as to say that, “Related to disclosure is the idea of how we make sure not to set expectations around the release that end up disappointing you—features that don’t make it, claims that don’t stick, or support we don’t provide. Starting from the first days of developing Windows 7, we have committed as a team to “promise and deliver”. That’s our goal—share with you what we’re going to get done, why we’re doing it, and deliver it with high quality and on time.”

So no more release date delays then and missing features? Lets hope so.