Someone with butter fingers at Microsoft has prematurely let slip when the company plans to push out the Release Candidate version of Windows 7 by posting the download page early.

Microsoft has refused to comment on when users can expect to see a near-ready version of Windows 7 arrive but many observers were expecting an April release.

The download page appears to still be live at time of writing.

We've asked Microsoft to comment on the PR cock-up, but it hadn't immediately got back to us.

In the meantime, the download page reveals that the RC will be available until June this year, there's no limit on product key and it's set to expire in June 2010.

It also details hardware spec requirements for the operating system, including a PC running a minimum 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor or higher, 1GB of system memory and support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB memory.

So there you have it, Microsoft has inadvertently set the clock ticking but many will be wondering if it can stick to the schedule this time. ®

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