Windows 7 gets 11 builds closer to RC with no leaks (yet)

In a blog post this morning about Windows Gadgets (the post is in Japanese), a Microsoft developer released a Windows 7 screenshot that really isn't all that noteworthy. It doesn't display any massive UI changes. There's no killer hidden feature captured. It's just his desktop and Gadgets.

The build date and number, however, did catch my interest. Noting that build 7068 was created on March 21, 2009 that means Microsoft has gone about 16 days and 11 builds without a leaked ISO hitting torrent trackers - 7057 has been floating around for a couple weeks now.

Into Windows has posted a few other screens - again nothing too exciting, except for the Windows Script Host image that shows an evaluation end date of June 2, 2010. That's a day later than the one revealed in yesterday's Technet slip-up, but close enough to underscore how close we are to a Windows 7 candidate.

With a new authentic version number out there, you can expect to see some shady uploaders posting torrents of older (and possibly modified) builds with the 7068 string. It's happened before, so be careful what you download.

If nothing else, it's a further sign that the Windows 7 dev team is forging ahead toward the release candidate, which should be out soon. It's been known for a while that the original April 10th date was changed and that the Escrow Build would likely be ready at the end of April with the full RC coming in early May.

[via NeoWin]