Rumors flying on Windows 7 schedule

There’s increasing speculation about the release schedule of Windows 7, the successor to Vista. While some sources say the first public beta release could be delayed until December, another report suggests the finished edition might be released as early as next summer.

It’s already known that Microsoft intends to give out the first official technical details of Windows 7 at two conferences in October. There had been some assumptions that this would be a formal unveiling of the beta release. However, it’s now looking as if this might be nothing but a demonstration or even a mere announcement, with no software actually handed out. (Insert your Mojave experiment gag here.)

Mary-Jo Foley of ZDNet reports anonymous Microsoft testers as saying the first beta release of Windows 7 will not come out until mid-December. She also says that, while there’s no official word, it seems unlikely there’ll be any incomplete versions getting widespread distribution in the meantime; Microsoft wants the first public view to be of a system with all the major features in place.

The official engineering blog for the Windows 7 project continues to be updated with details on the production process, but there are no specific references to timetables. What is known is that Microsoft is currently on its third, and presumably final, ‘milestone release’ before the beta edition. The difference is that milestone releases are not intended to be complete, while the beta release should stand alone as a complete working system (albeit one that will be refined and improved after testing).

Given the news about the beta edition, it’s surprising to read that internetnews.com is reporting 3 June 2009 as the planned release date on Microsoft’s internal calendar. Writer Andy Patrizio also reports that a makeshift beta edition is already available, but this is purely for hardware and software producers to test compatibility with specific products rather than to assess the entire system.

Even if the June date proves incorrect (and there have been no other reports to back it up), even the expected late 2009/early 2010 release would only give a year or so of beta testing. That suggests either that Microsoft hasn’t had to make that many changes from Vista or that it expects to make comparatively few changes between the beta and final release. It could well be that the firm wants to get the beta edition working as well as possible to cut down on negative reviews before the system is even finished.

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