Bill Veghte, senior vice president of the Windows Business at Microsoft, has confirmed that Windows 7 will be available to customers in time for the holiday shopping season at its North American TechEd conference in Los Angeles.
"We're tracking well to deliver Windows 7 in time for holiday availability based on the groundswell of feedback we received from the partner ecosystem, customers and through our own internal testing from pre-beta to now," said Veghte.
The software giant has previously been deliberately vague about Windows 7's launch in particular, stating that WIndows 7 would be available no later than three years after the general availability of Windows Vista - 30th January 2010, in other words.
Given that the first and only public beta - which happened to be 'feature complete' - was released in January of this year and the fact that there would only be the one Release Candidate instead of the usual two or three, Microsoft's release timeframe always looked incredibly conservative in our eyes. Indeed, we had heard from many different sources that it was likely to see general availability this year.
Indeed, it was Acer who spilled the beans on a potential October 23rd launch date earlier this month - that's still quite a likely timeframe given Veghte's comments since Microsoft would want to have the OS on the shelves in time for Black Friday - the busiest shopping day of the year in the US - at the end of November.
As we get closer to Windows 7's launch, the next date we're going to hear is when Microsoft will start offering a free upgrade to Windows 7 on new PCs shipping with Vista - it's something the software giant does to ensure that the PC market doesn't dry while consumers lie in anticipation for the new OS release.
A number of the bit-tech team are already running the release candidate and can't wait for the RTM code. Have you been running the RC too and, if so, how are you finding it? Tell us in the forums.
"We're tracking well to deliver Windows 7 in time for holiday availability based on the groundswell of feedback we received from the partner ecosystem, customers and through our own internal testing from pre-beta to now," said Veghte.
The software giant has previously been deliberately vague about Windows 7's launch in particular, stating that WIndows 7 would be available no later than three years after the general availability of Windows Vista - 30th January 2010, in other words.
Given that the first and only public beta - which happened to be 'feature complete' - was released in January of this year and the fact that there would only be the one Release Candidate instead of the usual two or three, Microsoft's release timeframe always looked incredibly conservative in our eyes. Indeed, we had heard from many different sources that it was likely to see general availability this year.
Indeed, it was Acer who spilled the beans on a potential October 23rd launch date earlier this month - that's still quite a likely timeframe given Veghte's comments since Microsoft would want to have the OS on the shelves in time for Black Friday - the busiest shopping day of the year in the US - at the end of November.
As we get closer to Windows 7's launch, the next date we're going to hear is when Microsoft will start offering a free upgrade to Windows 7 on new PCs shipping with Vista - it's something the software giant does to ensure that the PC market doesn't dry while consumers lie in anticipation for the new OS release.
A number of the bit-tech team are already running the release candidate and can't wait for the RTM code. Have you been running the RC too and, if so, how are you finding it? Tell us in the forums.
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