Brian Valentine confirms Windows 2000 ship dates

Microsoft's Brian Valentine, who is currently heading the Windows 2000 project at Microsoft, keynoted the annual NT Wizards conference Tuesday in Seattle, showing off a host of new Windows 2000 features. And Valentine confirmed the Beta 3 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) and Beta 3 release dates that were published previously in WinInfo.

According to Valentine, Beta 3 RC1 will ship March 17, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, a traditional day of partying at the Redmond campus. And the final Beta 3 release will ship on April 21st. Valentine, however, refused to give a date for the final product, holding to the official party line that they will not ship Windows 2000 until their customers say it's ready. If my sources are correct, however, Microsoft's customers will say that Windows 2000 will be "ready" to ship in October. Stay tuned as always!

Thanks to Peter Worcester, who reported this information from the conference