Microsoft's Windows 8 Release Preview looks to hit on May 31
[h=1]Microsoft's Windows 8 Release Preview looks to hit on May 31[/h]By
Mary Jo Foley | May 30, 2012, 5:13pm PDT
Summary: Microsoft may be set to deliver the near-final release preview of Windows 8 to testers as early as May 31, according to an accidentally posted blog entry.
Thanks to an accidental blog post, Microsoft officials may have tipped their hand that the Windows 8 Release Preview — the final public test build of Windows 8 — may hit a bit earlier than many expected.
Microsoft officials have been promising for weeks that Windows 8 Release Preview would be available for download during the first week of June. But a May 30 post — now pulled — on a new Windows Hardware and Driver Developer blog — outlined plans for availability for the Release Preview with a “download here” link that slated to go live on May 31.
A few of the folks I follow on Twitter
saw the post and wondered aloud whether the Windows 8 team might follow its well-trodden path of underpromising and overdelivering by pushing out the Release Preview earlier than promised.
Neowin.net grabbed a screen capture of the blog post, authored by Chuck Chan, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Development Team, before Microsoft pulled it.
Not only does the pulled post mention the Windows 8 Release Preview, but it also mentions a new Windows Driver Kit 8 and the Visual Studio 2012 Release Preview. Microsoft has been referring to the coming version of Visual Studio as “Visual Studio 11,” but I’ve noted previously that my sources have been saying for months that
the final name of the product would be Visual Studio 2012.
There have been a number leaks of the Windows 8 Release Preview bits, with
the most recent being this week from WinUnleaked.tk and various Chinese Web sites.
If you want to read the text of the accidentally posted blog entry from Microsoft, one of my readers who requested anonymity sent me a screen capture of it. Here’s the text in full: