The Windows 7 project involved very efficient software engineering planning and execution. It is no surprise that an equivalent level of efficiency exists throughout the OS (efficiency in how the OS deals with faults, threads, memory management, power management, process management, window management, graphics, audio, local search, diagnostics, and on and on - truly excellent, and efficient, engineering).  It is with great excitement that today Windows 7 RTMs! Developers and ISVs can get the final build on August 6, 2009. General availablity is slated for October 22, 2009. Michael Fortin is a Distinguished Engineer in the Windows Core Operating System Division. His team builds the technologies that help make Windows 7 reliable, stable and performant, which are core ingredients in any highly efficient general purpose operating system. You’ll hear us talk about Windows 7 as a very efficient general purpose operating system quite a bit over the coming months. In fact, if I had to sum up Windows 7 in one word it would be Efficient. Michael's team also builds the troubleshooting and diagnostics systems in Windows, including the internal mechanisms that construct fault data packages and sends them to cloud-based components which receive data from millions of clients running Windows 7. Michael's team is a global team - engineers are located in multiple places around the world including a stellar team of engineers located in Beijing, China (you'll meet them in the future right here on C9). You may remember Michael from his last interview on Channel 9 that covered his work on Vista's SuperFetch and ReadyBoost technologies. Yep, these great technologies are alive and well in Windows 7 and have evolved to meet the needs of the evolving system and help add to the overall efficiency of Windows. (There, I wrote "efficiency" again...) Over the past year or so, Michael's team has received, analyzed and acted upon a very large amount of data sent from Windows 7 Beta ...