A very observant Neowin user discovered the change of the official Windows 7 Beta Customer Preview page. The page contents were changed to contain information about the Windows 7 Release Candidate release prematurely. Microsoft has since then discovered the blunder and restored the old page but not before the information that it contained made its way to various news sites on the Internet.
The page listed various information about the Windows 7 release candidate, the most important were:
- The Windows 7 Release Candidate will be at least available through June 2009 with no product key limitation.
- Windows 7 RC will expire on June 1, 2010.
- Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 RC will be available for download in the five languages English, German, Japanese, French, and Spanish
While the posted information are aiming at Technet subscribers they do reveal information that are important to anyone. Those that already have installed a beta build of Windows 7 will have the chance to continue working with the operating system as the beta builds are set to expire on August 1, 2009. The published information make it seem very likely that the release candidate of Windows 7 will also be publicly released.
The Windows 7 RC will ship with five languages instead of the seven that were available in the Windows 7 beta release. Both Hindi and Arabic are not available in the Windows 7 RC release.
Setting the expiration date of the release candidate to June 1, 2010 will also mean that Microsoft is planning to release the final retail version of Windows 7 before that day, most likely in the first quarter of 2010 to give all RC users enough time to switch to the final Windows 7 release.
