Cyber Dimensions....

Microsoft posted prematurely a download page for the Windows 7 Release Candidate and — gasp! — one with a date of May 2009 attached to it.

The Windows team has been doing its best not to talk specific dates in advance of delivering any of its milestone builds. (No published dates means no one can ever say you’re late, right?)

Previous reports had pegged Microsoft’s one and only RC as arriving in April.

ArsTechnica has a screen shot of the Win 7 RC download page. As Ars notes, the RC download period is set to last through June 2009 and the RC set to expire in June 2010. Ars also grabbed a shot of the expected hardware requirements for the Windows 7 RC:

• Internet access (to download Windows 7 RC and get updates)
• A PC with these minimum recommended specifications:
  • 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor or higher
  • 1 GB of system memory or more
  • 16 GB of available disk space
  • Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)
  • DVD-R/W Drive

I’m still betting the Softies are going to RTM in Q3 of this year, whether the RC is slightly later than expected or not. We’ll see….

blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/