Over in Vegas at CES, Pocket-lint has been given its strongest indication yet that Microsoft will launch Windows 8 in October 2012.

Discussing the launch time frame during a briefing and demo session of the next-gen OS Janelle Poole, director of public relations of the Windows Business Group, said:

"We haven't talked about the release date and we generally don't. We are talking milestone to milestone, so for us right now we're talking about the next milestone being the consumer preview happening in late February. 

"One of the things that I think is a good guideline though is we've always said that Windows releases come round about every three years and this year will be three years in October since we launched Windows 7. So I think that's a good guideline to consider."

October has long been touted as the month that the Metro UI-tastic platform will land, but this is the biggest hint that we've been given so far.

You'll remember that, at the Microsoft Developer Forum in Tokyo in May last year, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that the next version of Windows would be released the following year.

“And yet, as we look forward to the next generation of Windows systems, which will come out next year, there's a whole lot more coming," he said. 

During the Acer press conference at the Vegas expo, its CEO J.T. Wang stated that Windows 8 machines would be landing later on this year. "When the next generation of Windows launches, in the second half [of 2012], we will launch another wave of Ultrabook products," he said.

Exciting stuff from Microsoft then with plenty to look forward too.