Microsoft Corp. has just released its new Windows 7 operating system for client computers, but already now the world’s largest software giant is hard at work developing the next-generation Windows 8 system, which is, apparently, due to be out in 2012.

According to a slide published by Microsoft Kitchen web-site, which resemble slides from Microsoft’s official presentations, the next major releases of Windows operating systems – the next-gen Windows Server as well as Windows 8 – are both due sometime in 2012. Even though the launch of Windows 8 about two or two and a half years after the release of Windows 7 seems to be inline with slightly less than three years interval between Windows 7 and Windows Vista, the information should still be taken with a grain of salt.

Historically Microsoft released a new desktop operating system every two to three years, at least, this was true for Windows 95, 98, ME and XP and was not particularly true for workstation OSes – there was a four-year gap between the NT4 and 2000. However, Windows Vista – shipped over five years after the XP because the company had to reassign software developers to patch the latter and release service pack 2. Windows 7 brings Microsoft back on track with two to three years cadence, but who said that Windows 7 will never require major updates?

Microsoft did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows