At Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles it was announced that the first public beta for Windows 7 would be announced early in 2009.

Although M$ have already provided developers and journalists with a pre-beta build, they will be releasing a beta 1 to the public in only a few months.

Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president for Windows, said at the conference, on Tuesday 28th October 2008:-

"The beta’s going to be feature complete and we’re going to deliver the beta early next year."

According to Sinofsky a final release date for 7 still hasn’t yet been decided. Microsoft are going to be gauging people’s reactions to the beta first before even considering an RTM date. The company are supposedly sticking to their plans to launch a new OS every three years. This leads one to believe that the release will be in January 2010. Personally I very much doubt that this is an ideal time to be releasing a new operating system, and I think it wise to expect a pre-Christmas release – which would most likely be in 2009. Nobody has any money left in January after the holiday season; and the retail sector in general is concentrating in selling off overstocks cheaply rather than launching new products at that time of year.

Sinofsky told journalists earlier this week "We really do mean we’ll ship it when it’s ready. We don’t need to be playing schedule goals all the time.".

- So what say you? 2009 or 2010 release? Do leave a comment stating your opinion.