A blog post on a Microsoft blog which prematurely went live has revealed that the software giant is planning on releasing the Windows 8 Release Preview today, May 31.

The post in question, which was previously accessible at this address, has been taken down by Microsoft.

However, sites like Neowin and The Next Web managed to get screenshots of the post before the Windows operating system maker could take the post down.

The Verge is reporting that it has confirmed this release date for the Windows 8 Release Preview. We’ll discuss this on the latter part of this post.

The post written by Chuck Chan, Corporate Vice President on the Windows Development team, was announcing the availability of the Windows 8 Release Preview.

He said: “We’re very excited to make available today the Windows 8 Release Preview on the Windows Dev Center.”

As of now, the “Windows Hardware and Driver Developer Blog” is showing that no posts have been created yet. As the screenshots from Neowin and TNW suggest, the blog post was supposed to go live today but it went live a day early.

Here are the screenshots from Neowin and TNW:

A copy of the post, along with all the links, has been grabbed by TNW and here it is in full:

Welcome to the Windows 8 Hardware blog! I’m Chuck Chan,Corporate Vice President on the Windows Development team. We’re very excited to make available today the Windows 8 Release Preview on the Windows Dev Center.Windows 8 represents a leap forward for the Windows platform, the development tool set, and the device experiences you can build for Windows. We’re launching this blog to give you some insight into how we designed and built Windows 8, and to explore the best practices for developing great hardware and drivers, as you enter the new world of Windows 8 development.

The people contributing to this blog are the engineers
building Windows 8 and the tools and kits that support it. Our goal is to help
you get started by focusing on the “why” and “how” of building amazing PCs and
device experiences for Windows 8. Each blog post will present a development
topic and tie together information from the Dev Center, Forums, MSDN Library, and where it makes sense, samples from the Windows Hardware Code Gallery.

We designed the Windows 8 platform and tools to help you
create high-quality drivers and Metro style device apps using an integrated,
modern tool set. Using the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) and Visual Studio, you can
write, build, sign package, deploy, test, and debug your drivers and apps
directly from Visual Studio. With the new Windows Hardware Certification Kit,
you can ensure the compatibility and reliability of your devices, and provide a
great overall user experience.

To get started, download and install Windows 8 Release Preview, the Windows Driver Kit 8, and Visual Studio Professional 2012. The Windows 8 SDK is also included with Visual Studio. As you begin using Windows 8, you’ll
notice that we’ve added new features and improved existing ones. In addition to
providing a modern tool set, we’ve also been hard at work improving power
management and refining the way you provide a great user experience for devices with Metro style device apps. We’ll share more
details in future posts.

The Windows Development team will post to this blog once
every one to two weeks until the release of Windows 8. Commenting is
encouraged, and we are looking forward to a lively conversation. Please apply
common courtesy and stay on topic with your comments. The Windows Hardware Community Forum is also a great place for hardware-related questions and discussion about
Windows 8.

We can’t wait to see the amazing devices and experiences
you’re building for Windows 8 come to life!

Chuck Chan, May 31 2012

According to TNW, the links in the post will be live any time today.

Meanwhile, The Verge is reporting that it has independently confirmed the May 31 release of the Windows 8 Release Preview from unnamed sources.

Furthermore, the publication is saying that the Windows 8 Release Preview due to be released by Microsoft will “feature Flash bundled into the Metro-based version of Internet Explorer 10.”

Microsoft has previously promised that the Windows 8 Release Preview will be made available during the first week of June.

All these stages Microsoft is going through point to the likely release of the final retail version of the Windows 8 operating system by October.

For Microsoft, a lot is riding on the Windows 8 as it looks to support tradition desktop and laptop computers as well as mobile devices like tablets.

Microsoft seems confident, however, that Windows 8 is up to the task. In a public speaking engagement in Seoul recently, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the Windows 8 OS is the “deepest, broadest and most impactful” Windows OS they have made and that it is in a way a “rebirth” of Windows.

However, from the looks of it, Windows 8 packs some great improvements like its boot time being blazing fast, maybe even too fast.

Meanwhile, Windows 8 Release Preview has finally gone live.

About Solon Harmony Dolor

A passion for technology and journalism makes this upcoming writer very interested in social media and technology news. Fresh from finishing an English and Journalism degree from the University of the Philippines Diliman, he aims to bring interesting news to our readers .