Bill Gates speaking before the Inter-American Development Bank said that we can expect Windows 7 "sometime in the next year":

"Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version," he actually said. Bill Gates will retire from his job as Microsoft’s chairman in July 2008, but he previously stated that he will be fully involved in the key decisions regarding the next products.

This statement created widespread confusion as most people understood that the final version of Windows 7 would be released next year, much earlier than expected. However, since this was Gates talking, and with all the fuss concerning Vista's failure on the market, people started wondering whether Microsoft changed its plans and wants to speed up the release of Windows 7, the next operating system from the Redmond company, due to replace Vista.

However, a Microsoft spokesman told CNN that in fact the industry veteran was talking about alpha or beta versions, as it usually happens, and not the final product. In fact, an early version was already shipped in 2007 to selected testers and partners. The Windows 7 Milestone 1 (build 6.1.6519.1).

"As is standard with the release of a new product, we will be releasing early builds of Windows 7 prior to its General Availability as a means to gain tester feedback," according to Microsoft's statement. "We're not sharing additional information at this time."

In October 2007, Microsoft's Distinguished Engineer Eric Traut has demonstrated during a presentation at the University of Illinois, a version of the Windows kernel, called MinWin, which has just 100 files and 25MB. The small kernel will allegedly be a part of Windows 7, which seeks to componentize the Windows kernel and reduce the dependencies, with the purpose of reducing the disk footprint and memory usage.