Julie Larson-Green, responsible for the user interface of Office 2007, and also the person behind the ribbon-like interface has been transferred to the Windows 7 team.

The current release date of the Windows 7 operating system is expected to be in late 2009, early 2010, returning to the 3-year pause between desktop operating system versions that was common at Microsoft for all Windows versions prior to Windows Vista.

The most common dilema about Windows 7 right now is whether or not to use backward compatibility. Strong rumours have suggested that the OS will be developed from scratch on top of the Windows NT kernel, given its maturity in both security and stability terms. The backward compatibility, however, is something that Microsoft developers would frown upon, since it prevents truly revolutional ideas to be implemented. Windows Vista, because of its backward compatibile, carries a large amount of code libraries with it, thus the large size of the operating system. However, many businesses that haven't upgraded their software in a decade or more would not purchase Windows 7 if it was not compatible with their applications. As a result, the current options that Microsoft has are to either make Windows 7 backward compatible, or to maintain a legacy version of Windows in parallel, for the business customers, one which will be kept alive by Microsoft though patches and updates.