Windows 8 planning and preparation underway

According to a job posting on Microsoft's career site, Windows 8 planning & preparation is currently taking place.

The job posting, spotted by enthusiast site CodenameWindows, hints at third-party application updating, updating virtual machines while they are turned off & delivering full applications, among others. Microsoft admits in the posting that updating virtual machines whilst they are off "turns out this is hard!." The job is for a role on the Windows Update Client team, responsible for delivering program updates to over 600 million machines.

With Windows 7 out of the door, work is now beginning on Windows 7 SP1 & Windows 8. Expect to see increasingly hints at what is to come over the coming months.

"As part of this team, you will help shape Windows 8. Components of our code include a core agent that runs as an NT service, an API layer & a UI application. They talk to the update servers using web services & they have special protocols in place to deal with the huge scale of the system" notes the job listing.

Thanks to Shayla for the news tip