14 DAY TRIAL // While Steven Sinofsky is now managing to throw a few bones from the Windows 7 dogfooding feast outside of Redmond, any piece of information coming directly from the Windows chief continues to be translucent. In this Windows 7 monologue, the Senior Vice President of the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group is offering just a taste of Vista's successor, but little palpable details. However, Microsoft's infrastructure is always a source of information beyond what Microsoft is prepared to offer officially to the general public. Case in point: the Windows 7 Client drivers which are already available for download.
Via the Microsoft Update Catalog, the Redmond giant has started serving drivers tailored to Windows 7 (via Neowin). The next iteration of Windows has already made its debut with Milestone 1 back in December 2007. Even more, Microsoft did produce additional development milestones for the U.S. antitrust authorities, but beyond M1, no other Windows 7 Build was leaked. However, the MU Catalog does not mention a specific Windows 7 version.
Performing the "Windows 7 Client" search will return in excess of 1,000 matching results delivering drivers and updates designed to integrate with the successor of Windows Vista. At the same time, the MU Catalog is also serving items tailored to Windows 7 Server, or Windows Server 2008 R2, although not at the same volume as for the Windows 7 Client.
With Windows 7 popping out both on Microsoft Update and Windows Server Update Services, it is clear that Microsoft is preparing its updating infrastructure to expand beyond Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Speculations of an imminent Beta release of Windows 7 have already begun to circulate, but Microsoft has failed to confirm anything officially until this point in time. In fact, the company's silence is so absurd that it has refused to reveal the actual deadline for the delivery of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 (a Windows component) even as there are just 10 days until the end of August, when time will run out for the release.
