Windows 8 coming in 2012?

It’s in commercial operating system developer’s best interests to release new versions of its OS as often as possible, but it’s also an art. Release new versions too frequently and your number of paid upgraders go down, since upgrading an operating system (especially at an enterprise level) is a huge pain in the coccyx, and the expense and trouble alienates customers.

Under that methodology, Windows 7 is probably coming out a bit sooner than Microsoft’s ideal, but it was a response required by Vista’s abysmal word of mouth and low-adoption rates, especially amongst less beefy machines. But with Windows 7 not even out yet, is it already time to start talking about Windows 8?

Microsoft sure seems to think so: they have already started to hire developers for the next iteration of the operating system.

So far, there’s scant details on what Windows 8 will actually be, although it won’t be a head first leap into cloud computing, as rumored. However, if the job descriptions are anything to go by, Windows 8 will see a radical rehaul of the file system.

One job posting looks for someone to help program the next generation of Windows’ Distributed File System Replication storage technology, with “new critical features… including cluster support and support for one way replication” and performance improvements a big plus.

Microsoft has seemed to half-heartedly want to leap to a more advanced file system structure for a while now. In fact, this was initially toted as the big leap Vista (then codenamed Longhorn) was going to make from XP.

If Windows 7 is anything to go by, Windows 8 will be available in 2011 or 2012. That’s a good time frame, if Apple’s bi-yearly release of OS X is anything to go by.