I’m about to go off the deep end of speculation. I’ll caveat my dreaming with two things: I work for Microsoft, and I’m not referencing anything I know from working there. This delusion is all my own.

Windows 8 is a pivotal moment for the company. Rumors point to an early-to-mid 2012 release of the new OS. The problem with that date is that it misses the 2011 holiday season, ceding another four quarters to Apple and Google as they continue to grow tablet mind and market share.

It feels now like we have to move faster than is possible, which is the point at which I unhinge myself from reality and enter a world of tech fantasy.

Information about Windows 8 has been under lock and key since the company announced its development back in 2009. The OS traditionally follows a three-year release cadence, making July 2012 roughly the right time to expect Windows 8′s release. As I said, this leaves the red meat to the competition for a good year–a dangerous prospect when one considers Apple’s recent record-shattering year on the back of iOS, and Android’s blistering ascent to the top of the mobile heap.

Now Steven Sinofsky, President of Windows and Windows Live, is no software development novice, nor is he unaware of market pressure. As the leader of Office 2007 and Windows 7, he has a track record of success. If any leader could pull the fantasy I’m about to outline from his hat, it’s Sinofsky.

Typically, when Microsoft releases a major product, it engages in extensive external testing. So far, that has yet to happen on a grand scale with Windows 8, which is interesting considering there’s less than a year left in its development cycle. By this point, builds and features have typically leaked because versions of the new OS are externally distributed. It’s not atypical to see screenshots plastered all over the Internet. The absence of this process has me wondering: could Windows 8 be on the hook for a holiday 2011 release after all?

Why would testing indicate anything about a release date, you ask? It hints at the work required to ship something as complex as an operating system. The primary reason for external testing is to subject the new software to as broad a range of inputs as possible prior to release, hoping to uncover bugs that customers would have likely run into otherwise. It’s crowd-sourced bug hunting, and it results in more polished products.

If the external test process is less intensive, perhaps it means the test barriers are lower this time. The major push in the OS thus far has been the new Metro UI, tailored for tablets and touch form factors. The new UI, however, is brand new and has no need for legacy testing. No existing apps are expected to work with it, namely because it’s built on a new platform: HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. From demos I’ve seen, the old Windows 7-style UI exists still, though little changed. If that’s the case, it’s possible, albeit unlikely, that there’s less need for legacy testing with this OS–nothing’s drastically changed with what exists, and what’s new is so new that nothing exists externally that needs to be tested.

From my experience, a new feature on average results in 10-20x the amount of work to implement than it took to think up, and anywhere from 10-100x the amount of work to test it, depending on the breadth and complexity of the feature. Accepting that, the team could shave off a huge amount of time in the development cycle by reducing the need for existing app developers and device makers to test out their products. The message is simple: what works will work, no need to test it.

Now back to earth. The reason this is out of touch with reality is that it’s unlikely the underlying Windows 7 OS has changed so little as to require zero app compatibility testing with existing software. There are ways around it–for instance, giving partners the OS with no visible changes and having them test the guts earlier on. If the rate of change in the old OS is less than the new one, active development on it could have ended and been ready for testing much earlier in the cycle. It’s improbable, though, albeit hopeful.

All of this of course is speculation spurred on by the belief that Microsoft has to act soon to have a chance at relevancy in the tablet and mobile markets. Windows Phone is quality software with a hard sales pitch in front of it. Windows is a dominant OS with high expectations for how it will resize to fill all the device needs as they rapidly evolve. Hopefully Sinofsky and his team can pull a rabbit from their hat and give Google and Apple a run for their money this holiday instead of next.