Microsoft: Windows 8 is Two Years Away

Compared to the ultra-long release period between Windows XP and Windows Vista, the launch of Windows 7 – which came out a mere 2.5 years after Vista – took many by surprise. It also left many of us wondering when Windows 8 would see the light of day, and if Microsoft’s release cycle was going to become more accelerated. As it seems, that’s not quite the case… at least not right now.

According to a blog post on Microsoft’s Dutch website, the company is quoted as saying that the release of Windows 8 is roughly two years away, which in the most literal sense would place it in the fall of 2012, a full three years after 7’s release. Microsoft hasn’t been the best with Windows launch dates, though, so it’s hard to say how close to the fall of 2012 the launch will actually be. 

Still, it’s good to have a general idea of the launch, and to be honest, I’m a bit surprised that there will be at least a 3 year time period in between both launches. After 7 came so quickly, I half-expected to see each subsequent release come a bit faster than the last, and end up reaching the point where one is released every year-and-a-half to two years, kind of like Apple’s Mac OS X.

So far, there hasn’t been a lot rumored or acknowledged about Windows 8, but as tackled in our news section this past summer, there were leaked slides that discussed an app store, larger focus on tablets and all-in-one PCs and even cooler… accelerometer support. After the great success of Windows 7, Microsoft is sure to have a hard time following-up, but I’m curious to see how it does it.

Indeed, Microsoft executives from Windows unit President Steven Sinofsky on down have been hesitant to say anything about the company’s future Windows plans. While the desktop team has been quiet, Microsoft’s server team did say last year that a major release of Windows Server was due in 2012 and server versions typically slightly lag a desktop release.