Bill Gates has said that Windows 7, the successor to Vista, could be released sometime in “the next year or so”. We guess this means in 2 years because he went on to say that the new version is scheduled for 2010.

Microsoft’s estimated release dates are notoriously optimistic, so it’s certainly unlikely to be within the next year.

Bill Gates did not reveal any details of changes or novel features to the operating system, although he did say that he was “super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways”.

The Developer Programme for Windows 7 has already been started by Microsoft and there are rumours that an early test version of the new OS, named Milestone-1, has already been given to Microsoft’s biggest customers.