Windows 8 is about to launch itself into prerelease state. Yesterday, Microsoft President Steve Sinofsky posted a blog about the new operating system indicating that the prerelease version will be making its way to some folks “over the coming months.”
The blog entry posted by Sinofsky is the first in a series called “Building Windows 8”, which is aimed at customers, developers, and general users of the operating system. The post provided little bits of information about Windows 8 but contained very little overall detail. Sinofsky acknowledge that consumers want more information saying “people express frustration over how little we’ve communicated so far about Windows 8.”
Sinofsky is promising to give more information in blog post form over the next few weeks.
"There is so much packed into Windows 8 and there are so many unique and important lenses through which to view Windows 8, and so we want to be sure to take the time to cover as many of these topics as possible, to build up a shared understanding of why we've taken Windows where we have," Sinofsky wrote. "So in the next weeks we will just start talking specifics of features, since there is no obvious place to start given the varying perspectives. From fundamentals, to user interface, to hardware support, and more, if something is important to you, we promise we'll get to it in some form or another."
Apparently “Building Windows 8” will but updated by Sinofsky as well as other members of the Windows 8 team. Sinofsky promises an open dialog with readers and that the team will admit to mistakes when they happen. Call me cynical but I’ll believe that tidbit when I see it happen.
The next major event for Windows 8 will be a September conference in which more details will be given to developers about tools to design software for the operating system. With the vague notion that Windows 8 could enter prerelease in the next few months, and more developer details coming soon, it seems plausible that Microsoft could get this software out the door soon, but likely not by year end. Even with only one beta and a Release Candidate version it’s my guess that final release wouldn't happen until at least March or April of 2012.
Are you on board with Windows 8 or are you staying with Linux/Mac OS X/your current version of Windows? Do you care about this trickling of details from a blog or would you rather just have all the information at once right before the beta hits? Let us know in the comments.
