An anonymous Microsoft blogger lets slip some next-next-gen OS tattle, only for the message to pulled by a company still trying to flog Windows 7.
As soon as one hurdle clears, another one looms, such is the endless cycle of the OS developer. We know before Microsoft had even chosen the colour of the Windows 7 box, it was planning the inevitable sequel. If we're going to believe this early (almost Apple-style) leaking, the future will be, well, different.
You can read a cached version of the post, here. And, if you ignore the scary .net typo in the bottom paragraph (oh, I pray that's a typo), then there are a couple of interesting snippets. For a start, its unlikely to be called Windows 8 (although the Asian market would surely lap that lucky numbered OS up) but the key takeaway is "The themes that have been floated truly reflect what people have been looking for years and it will change the way people think about PCs and the way they use them. It is the future of PCs..."
Some further digging, brings us to the Mircosoft Kitchen blog which finds some dates in an aggregated Microsoft PDF, mentioning July 1st, 2011 as the RTM date for whatever the product is finally called. That would lead up to an October 2011 release, three years after Windows 7 - which is right on track for the OS upgrade path.
Sure, you can choose to believe, ignore or devour these snippets of (mis?)-information and start building your little shrine to the next Windows. We think they are fairly logical conclusions to draw from past behaviour and available information. But, we hope that Microsoft has developed Windows 7 as Vista Service Pack 2 and is keeping all the radical stuff for Windows 8.