The chairman of Microsoft Corp., Bill Gates, said at a news-conference that the world’s largest maker of software is on-track to release its next-generation operating system (OS) sometime in 2009. Certain indirect claims of Microsoft confirm this timeframe, which was already once named as the deadline for what is known as Windows 7, but then the company announced different schedules for code-named Vienna OS.

“Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version [of Windows operating system. I’m super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways,” said Bill Gates at a conference of Inter-American Development Bank, reports cnetnews.com

Also on Thursday Microsoft said that it would continue to offer its Windows XP Home operating system for low cost computers until mid-2010 or “one year after general availability of the next version of Windows”. The claim implies that Microsoft does plan to release its Windows 7 in mid-2009, a little more than a year from now.