Microsoft’s Technet Web site recently announced through a blog post that the company will be releasing the beta version for its upcoming Windows 7 by January 2009.

The post notes that the ones interested should register for one of the upcoming MSDN developer conferences where the attendees will receive a DVD with Windows 7 beta 1 on it.

"My understanding is that the DVD will not be ready for the first few show dates but will be mailed to each attendee," announced Microsoft’s Keith Combs, adding that "We are targeting to have the DVDs in the materials from 1/13/2009 on."

The company prepared and distributed a pre-beta version of Windows 7 to the people present at the Professional Developer Conference in late October and also at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in early November. At the time, Microsoft’s officials announced that their efforts are focused on completing the work on a broader beta by early 2009, and considering the post, the progress appears to go just as planned.

"As we said at the PDC, we expect to deliver beta 1 in early 2009 and we continue to be on track to deliver against that development milestone," Microsoft said.

In other news, Microsoft gave its MSDN and TechNet subscribers yesterday access to the beta of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and announced that it will make the software available to the general public over the next two days through a Customer Preview Program (CPP).