Could We See a Windows 8 Beta this Fall?

Last fall, we linked to a report that stated Windows 8 could be released in the fall of 2012, and if recent leaks are to be believed, that seems downright doable. According to the leak, acquired by Mary-Jo Foley, Microsoft’s Windows 8 schedule is going according to plan, and “Milestone 2” production has just completed, and Milestone 3 is set to begin.

Given the current schedule, Mary-Jo states, it’s easily believed that a small beta could hit developers at around September this year, and quite possibly, a wider beta could be released later in the fall, a la Windows 7. If this all happens, it means that Windows 8 could well be the next Windows 7, in that the launch scheduling went off without a hitch. Could Microsoft do it twice in a row? We’ll see.

Also interesting is the fact that a leaked document from Dell last week gave hints at a Windows 8 tablet to be launched in January of 2012. This is interesting, because normally, January (and around CES) is the best time for developers to unveil new products… so what’s the story here? It’s unlikely that Microsoft is so ahead of the game that we’ll see a launch this year, but it does appear that things are going well enough that we’ll be seeing the OS at CES.

Milestone 2, according to the roadmap, took the Windows client team five months. If M3 takes another five months — which it might if it has to go through all the same coding/integration/fixing/lockdown steps as M2 did — that would put its completion date around the end of July. Factor in a month or so for any kind of private Community Technology Preview (CTP) testing, and a beta around the time of this year’s Professional Developers Conference — which I’m still hearing is slated for September 2011 — looks downright doable.