James Delahunty
19 Apr 2009 19:10
Microsoft's partner program site temporarily revealed an expected date for the first Windows 7 release candidate to be made available. "Partners: If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now," the page read Saturday afternoon. "Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009." The link however led the user to a TechNet download page that didn't have any Windows 7 RC in sight.
This is the second such incident in about three weeks to do with the release candidate details. In late March, a page was added to a Microsoft site indicating that the RC will be available sometime in May, but when it started to get attention, Microsoft quickly removed it.
The latest information leak did not mention a public roll-out date, but generally speaking Microsoft makes previews available to MSDN and TechNet several days before the public. For example, in January MSDN subscribers could download a Windows 7 beta on January 7, while the public started to download on January 9.