Will Windows 8 Be Ready For Release In 2012?

[wraggster]

MrSeb (http://mrseb.co.uk/) writes with an excerpt from an Extreme Tech article on the Windows 8 release timeline:"...A Microsoft vice president announced that the Windows 8 beta would begin in late February 2012. The beta will be feature-complete and will allow developers to begin listing their apps in the Store (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2011/12/06/announcing-the-new-windows-store.aspx). The timing of the beta is curious, and ultimately quite telling. ... The first public build of Windows 8 (http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/09/14/0141239/microsoft-releases-windows-8-developer-preview) ... emerged in mid-September 2011; by the time the beta rolls around, it will have been ruminating for more than five months. If we follow the timeline forward — it took 10 months for Windows 7 to go from beta to public release — then it's possible that Windows 8 might arrive just in time for Black Friday 2012 (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/108153-windows-8-beta-coming-in-february-too-late-for-a-final-release-in-2012), or perhaps not in 2012 at all. Will its late arrival affect its chances of cutting out a swath of the tablet market from Apple and Android? Or will Windows 8 be different enough that it will do well, no matter when it arrives?"In related news, an anonymous reader notes that IDC predicts Windows 8 will be irrelevant to the traditional PC market (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/windows-8-will-be-largely-irrelevant-to-traditional-pc-users-idc/11336).
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/07/1733222/will-windows-8-be-ready-for-release-in-2012