New Windows coming in late September -- but which one?

It looks like we're due for a preview of Windows sometime in late September. As InfoWorld's Eric Knorr noted last week, there's something new brewing with Windows in Redmond, and it looks like we'll have a chance to see it in four to six weeks. At this point, though, there's very little consensus about what will appear.
ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley kicked off the speculation a week ago with her usual well-connected, anonymous, likely coordinated report from unnamed sources:

Microsoft is aiming to deliver a "technology preview" of its Windows "Threshold" operating system by late September or early October, according to multiple sources of mine who asked not to be named. ... "Threshold" is the next major version of Windows that is expected to be christened "Windows 9" when it is made available in the spring of 2015. "Threshold" is expected to include a number of new features that are aimed at continuing to improve Windows' usability on nontouch devices and by those using mice and keyboards alongside touch.

Tom Warren at The Verge pegs the announcement date as Sept. 30. Paul Thurrott hasn't yet chimed in, as he usually does, but he's been on vacation and is due back today.
Foley is very careful to maintain a semantic distance between "Threshold" and "Windows 9." Many people think the terms are synonymous, but long-time Chinese leaker Faikee continues to maintain that they are two separate products, possibly headed off in different directions.
Neowin Senior Editor and Columnist Brad Sams appears to have access to the most recent test builds, possibly on a daily basis. He doesn't talk about details, but the items he's let drop on the Neowin forum leave an interesting trail of crumbs:

• Sams confirms, independently, that a preview will be available "soon."
• "Every week they are adding new features (roughly) like virtual desktops, Charms bar moving away, Cortana. ... It still looks a lot like what they showed off at Build but with more features."
• The current build series is numbered 982X.
• The watermark on the splash screens have been updated in recent builds to say "Windows Technical Preview." Several posters have noted that the first betas of Windows 8 carried the watermark "Windows Developer Preview," with no mention of "8" -- whether there's a "9" in the Technical Preview's future is anybody's guess.

In my opinion, Microsoft would be crazy to continue the "Windows 8" name -- Win8 deserves to be buried as quickly as possible. Whether the next version will be "Windows 9" or "Windows Gefiltefish" doesn't matter much at this point.
Which brings us to Faikee's continued insistence that "Threshold" and "Windows 9" are completely different products. Sams states, "I now know why FaiKee thinks that 'Threshold' and Windows 9 are two separate things -- not saying that I agree, but I know where it is coming from. ... It has to do with the design updates to the OS. If you were to put two builds right next to each either, they look totally different." Sams has promised to blog about the differences on Neowin. This is starting to get interesting.

On Friday, Sams wrote about a new, evolving feature that gives new emphasis to an old process:

On current internal builds of Windows "Threshold," you can upgrade builds with a single click of a button. How it works is that when you open Windows Update, there is a new feature that allows you to upgrade your build of Windows, meaning you could go from build 9825 to 9829 with a single click. ... This is not simply Windows Update but a new feature for the OS that is present in the internal builds of Windows "Threshold."

For those of us who have lived through in-place updates of Windows, the prospect of having a direct, user-friendly hook into an in-place upgrade process may ring a few alarm bells. In-place updates used to guarantee monstrous problems, sooner or later, but ever since the Vista-to-Win7 transition, they've become much cleaner. Keep your fingers crossed.
And finally, Russian leaker/leakers Wzor was very active on Twitter over the weekend. If your Russian's a little rusty, here's the gist of what he's saying:

• Microsoft apologizes to partners, "We are disappointed with what we've done for the last two years, ... have to rethink everything. ..." (Wzor uses the word "frantic.")
• Microsoft's current schedule for Windows 9 RTM is the end of 2014 (note the name).
• Windows Technical Preview scheduled for signoff in early September; partners are expecting to see Technical Preview builds in early September; leaks possible after September 15.

The rumored content of the Technical Preview has changed just a smidgen. Everyone expects the new live-tiled Start menu and windowed Metro tiles on the desktop. The Charms bar is going away both on the Desktop and in Metro, replaced by icons on the Metro title bar. There's likely a warmed-over virtual desktop capability, although it isn't clear how the new one will differ from the same feature in XP and Win7. I hear references to Cortana more and more frequently, and it may ship in the Technical Preview, although it's possible Microsoft will release the Technical Preview without Cortana and bring it on as a "surprise" later. Apparently it'll be possible for mouseketeers to turn off the Metro side completely. Maybe.
No word on the well-deserved death of Windows RT as a separate apparition. With some luck it'll get subsumed into Windows Phone/Tablet/Mobile/whatever they'll call it -- as it should've been in the beginning. (Speaking of names, why not "Metro"? If Apple can rent Lightning from Harley Davidson, surely Microsoft can rent Metro from Metro AG.) The next version of Metro Mobile may disable the desktop entirely, according to Myce -- which would bring us full circle to separate (or separable) touch-centric and mouse-centric versions of Windows. At last, the refrigerator and toaster may stand separately. That would be great news, two years too late.
Looks like we may have a new Windows -- or two new Windows --  this coming spring. I'll start preparing for Win8's wake right now.
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