Microsoft had originally confirmed that Windows 7 wouldn’t be released till 2010. We then started hearing rumours that it could come along in time for the holiday season. And finally on the 2^nd June, Microsoft announced Windows 7 would be available from the 22^nd October. So why did they bring forward the release date?
I’ll be interested in hearing your opinions on this but I thought I’d let you know mine first.

Snow Leopard

We all know that Apple is Microsoft’s biggest competition. Apple were and still are taking some of Microsoft’s market share as people were favoring the more stable Leopard OS. Snow Leopard was then announced for the 28th August. Microsoft needed to get in as soon as possible to compete and prevent losing even more market share to Apple.

Beta Builds & RC1

Microsoft also received good feedback from its beta build which was released on 9^th January 2009 it was remarkably stable and finished for a first beta release. The 1^st Release Candidate on May 5^th was a step above that again. I’ve been using it as my main OS since it was released without any problems. Microsoft’s team of developers and all those who gave feedback must have played an important role in having such a finished and stable RC. I’m sure this gave Microsoft confidence in their new OS and all the positive feedback made them realise that people wanted this sooner than 2010. They didn’t feel the need for a RC2 either which possibly would have pushed back the release date. I don’t think they needed one either.

Make Up For Vista

Windows 7 is without doubt one of the best OS’s I have ever used. It is my favourite OS at the moment and I congratulate Microsoft for finally getting it right. Don’t get me wrong, Windows XP was one of the best OS’s of its time and was a great leap forward for Microsoft, but that was way back in 2001. Things change and advance rapidly in this market and Microsoft’s solution to this with Windows Vista wasn’t their best so I won’t go on about it. They were eager to make up for their mistakes, And as I said earlier they were losing market share to Apple fairly quickly as users were heading to the more stable OS at the time. They were under pressure to produce an excellent OS fast! It’s no easy task creating a new OS with a huge amount of code that can have bugs hidden left, right and center in it. Thousands of hours must have been put into developing and testing it. And all credit to Microsoft and its testers, they really put in a good effort to make it as stable and polished as possible.

Driver Support

One of the biggest problems with Windows Vista was its lack of driver support which really put people off migrating to it. Manufacturers just didn’t want to make drivers for Windows Vista. The first few years for Vista were a nightmare for drivers. Eventually manufacturers realised that they had to make drivers for Windows Vista as it was still one of the most popular OS’s. Luckily, most drivers for Windows Vista will work with Windows 7 as well. Also manufacturers are more excited about Windows 7 than Vista, and those that didn’t make drivers for Vista are now doing so for Windows 7. This again will give consumers and businesses the confidence to upgrade to Windows 7, and it means Microsoft doesn’t have to wait for everyone to catch up and make drivers for Windows 7.

Key Market Opportunity

And finally, during one of the worst economic downturns we have ever experienced, Microsoft still had the ambition to release a new product. Obviously the best time for any business to release a new product is in time for the Christmas holidays. Microsoft’s original release date for 2010 would have been too late. If Microsoft had missed this opportunity to get their new product out there on new laptops and computers bought for Christmas, they would have missed a key opportunity to get back some of its market share and make some revenue.

So what do you think Microsoft’s reasoning was for releasing Windows 7 on the 22^nd October 2009 instead of 2010? Let us know in the comments.

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August 20th will be the last day you will be able to download the free Windows 7 Release Candidate.

Windows 7 RC is a very good product and safe enough to run as a primary OS, so if you’re not planning on upgrading to Windows 7 for a while after it’s launched on October 22nd, or you need a copy for a 2nd or 3rd machine, then using a copy of Windows 7 might be a solution as it will work until next May 2010.  After May 2010 it will start to shut-down every 30 mins.

Is anyone still using a build older than the RC, or is everyone using the Windows 7RC or Windows 7 RTM build now?

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Russian Twitter user Deeper2k recently tweeted a picture of an official mailing from Microsoft to Russian reseller partners, saying that business users with Software Assurance contracts before 31 August will be able to:

“have the rights to upgrade to Windows 7 on PCs they purchased starting on August 1, 2008”, with 15 per cent off”.

This is a significant change of strategy for Microsoft, as unlike the launch of Vista where business users were able to buy Windows Vista 2 months earlier than consumers, the original plan for the business and consumer launches of Windows 7 were for them to occur at the same time.

Microsoft are clearly desperate to cash in on the success and popularity of Windows 7 as quickly as possible.  All the signs are pointing to the fact that Windows 7 will be a major success for Microsoft, and well thought out features like Windows 7 XP mode will surely convince many businesses who decided not to upgrade to Vista, to make the leap to Windows 7.

I certainly hope my firm does, as it’s getting to the point were I’m struggling to use Windows XP as it’s so unfamiliar!

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Stuff.co.nz have been speaking to Microsoft representatives in New Zealand and they were told that Microsoft aren’t planning a high profile campaign similar to the launch campaigns of Windows XP and Windows Vista.

When Windows 7 is launched on October 22nd, a Microsoft spokesperson said:

“We will be doing something interesting and exciting. It’s hard to say what direction we will go in right now, but it will be appropriate to the times and not anything terribly extravagant.”

I think this is a shame as Microsoft have a great product in Windows 7, probably their best for a very long time.  There’s a quiet buzz developing around Windows 7 and apart from daft comments from the mac fanboys who haven’t even tried Windows 7, all the feedback I’ve seen on Windows 7 has been positive.  Microsoft do however seem to be putting on quite a charm offensive with partners to get them to support the launch.  For instance I work for an ISP in the UK, and I’ve never had so many meeting invites before from Microsoft to go to their offices to learn about a product.

When Windows 7 launches I will definitely be telling all my friends to upgrade, although I think the price will deter many and this is what Microsoft clearly is concious of.

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Users who were expecting a Windows 7 release at this year’s holiday season can now add another (the first official) confirmation to their list. A recent PressPass article confirms that Windows 7 is on track for a 2009 holiday season release:

Microsoft Tech•Ed North America 2009 kicked off today with announcements of new technologies that enable IT professionals and developers to help their organizations save money and improve efficiencies during difficult economic times. As part of today’s news, Microsoft Corp. announced that the company is anticipating that the next version of its client operating system, Windows 7, will be available to customers in time for the holiday shopping season. In addition, Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate (RC) is available today with the final product releasing to market in the same timeframe as Windows 7.

“Microsoft is committed to ensuring that IT professionals and developers continue to have the platform and technologies to drive maximum value and business results. Getting the most out of IT investments is even more important in today’s economy,” said Bill Veghte, senior vice president of the Windows Business at Microsoft, who delivered a keynote speech at the event. During his speech, Veghte also talked about incredible partner support for Windows 7 and gave updated guidance on availability: “With early RC testing and extensive partner feedback we’ve received, Windows 7 is tracking well for holiday availability.”

While a last minute delay cannot be ruled out at this point it is almost certain that Windows 7 will be shipped this year.

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The guessing game is over. The expected release date of Windows 7 has finally been revealed by Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte according to Windows news site wininfo. According to his statement on Monday “a holiday release is accomplishable” which suggests a final release of Windows 7 in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The next important step in the release cycle is the official release of the Windows 7 Release Candidate which went live just a few hours ago for MSDN and Technet subscribers. The same release candidate will be made publicly available on May 5.

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It’s been confirmed that Windows 7 Build 7100 is the official RC release. Complied on 21 April 2009 it is tagged as 7100.0.winmain_win7rc .090421-1700. More recent internal builds have been released, but 7100 is the official RC build.

The Windows 7 Release Candidate will be available for download on May 5th, although expect it to be leaked before then particualarly as MSDN and Technet subscribers will get it beforehand. Already fake torrents have been seen in the wild.

Builds 71XX will be based on RC1, and RC2 builds expected around August 2009 will be Builds 72XX. Given the pace of Windows 7′s development, if I were a betting man, I would put money in on the Windows 7 Release Date being before Christmas 2009.

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It looks like 2009 is going to be a good year for Bill Gates.  Not only has he reclaimed his place as the World’s richest man thanks to the global financial crisis ousting Warren Buffet who lost $25bn (ouch!) in 2008 , but analysts are also predicting that the launch of Windows 7 could add up to an extra $1.5 billion to Microsoft’s earnings.

Why?  Well because Microsoft will be throwing their entire marketing machine behind encouraging customers to upgrade to more expensive versions of Windows 7.  Selling Operating Systems is big business for Microsoft, accounting for 28% of its $60.4 billion in annual revenue.

No wonder Bill is smiling all the way to the bank….

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The guessing game is on again. Microsoft is tight lipped about the Windows 7 release schedule which is the main reason why so many different Windows 7 release dates are floating around on the Internet. Depending on the website that you visit you find release dates for Windows 7 that range from the second quarter of 2009 to the fourth quarter of 2010. That’s more than 18 months of difference.

There are indications that the most extreme release date suggestions will not become true. We know that the Windows 7 Release Candidate will most likely be released in April 2009 which makes it highly unlikely that Windows 7 will be released in the second or third quarter of 2009. The most likely release dates for Windows 7 are therefor located in the fourth quarter of 2009 or the first quarter of 2010.

According to Rachel Linnemann who is responsible for Windows business clients in Germany Windows 7 will not be released in 2009 but in the first quarter of 2010. While she explicitly mentions the Germany version of Windows 7 it is likely that this is also true for the other first tier languages.

According to Microsoft’s language release schedule for Windows 7 the German and English version of Windows 7 will be released at the same time together with several other languages.

Beta version users who might have fears that their beta versions run out will have the opportunity to upgrade to the Windows 7 Release Candidate which – most likely – will not expire before the official release of the final version of Windows 7. It is however not sure at this point if the release candidate of Windows 7 will be made available publicly or only to the beta testers.

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We had a poll running for some time asking about the release date of the Windows 7 operating system. Options were available from the first quarter of 2009 to 2011. Almost 30000 users have cast their vote on the release date, here are the results:

Most voters think that Windows 7 will either be released in the fourth quarter of 2009 or 2011. Both of these options received 18% of the votes. After that are the first quarter of 2010 with 16% of all votes followed by the first quarter of 2009 with 12%, the third quarter of 2009 with 11% and the second quarter of 2009 with 7% if all votes.

The majority of users (48%) believes that Windows 7 will be released in 2009.

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When you open your favorite Windows 7 news sites you notice that speculations about the release date of the Windows 7 beta are getting out of hand. Will it be January 13, January 5 or January 7? It probably does not take long before all dates in January have been selected to be the release date of the Windows 7 beta.

The real question is if it really matters when the beta is going to be released. Will a January 7 release date be that different from a release on January 5? The answer is that it should not really matter if it will be released in the first or second week of January or at a totally different time.

But why so much speculation about the release date? It is probably about the news, any news is good news is a popular slogan and it might especially be true in times where news are scarce. There is not really that much to report about Windows 7 currently as Microsoft continues to be tight lipped about the operating system. That might not be the only reason though: Many Windows users feel that Windows 7 is closely related to Windows Vista and that many elements are not overly “new” in Windows 7. T

This leaves the press with little to report about, even after testing a few pre-beta builds. What’s your take?

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Microsoft was very shy about pinpointing the Windows 7 release date in the past. They did provide some clues like that it would be released about three years after the release of Windows Vista, or that Windows 7 would be released before the PDC conference in 2009. There was still lots of speculation about the day, week or even month in that Windows 7 would be released.

According to an article published today on Cnet the guessing is over as Microsoft director Doug How confirmed the Holiday Season release date of Windows 7.

The slides and Howe’s presentation appeared to confirm what has been widely speculated–but something Microsoft has not outright said–namely that Windows 7 is aimed to ship around mid-year, in time to be on machines that ship for the 2009 holiday buying season. After the session, Howe essentially confirmed that Microsoft is aiming Windows 7 for the holidays. “Definitely the holiday focus is going to be on 7,” Howe told me.

While that is not still on paper and subject to change depending on the progress in the Windows 7 development it is fair to assume that customers will be able to buy computers – or standalone software packages – coming preinstalled with Windows 7 during the 2009 Holiday Season. The RTM (Release To Manufacturing) release of Windows 7 is expected for mid 2009.

So, there you got it. If everything works out as planned we will all be able to get our hands on the official Windows 7 release at the end of 2009.

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Microsoft is still not releasing many information about Windows 7 and it feels more like connecting the different pieces of a puzzle than anything else to discover news that have not already been covered on multiple other websites. We all suspected for a while that the last quarter of 2009 is the supposed release data of Windows 7.

Long Zheng mentioned an interesting sentence on the official WinHec 2008 website which stated that “there is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released”. WinHec is the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, an annual event that was just recently moved from the second quarter to the fourth.

It is unlikely that Microsoft will move the schedule of the conference once again in 2009 which suggests that Windows 7 will be released to manufacturing in October 2009. It will then be a matter of 1-2 months before customers can get their hands on the final retail version of Windows 7

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Some rumors emerged the other day which basically suggested that it could very well be possible for a Windows 7 release in mid 2009 according to a new article posted at Internet News which mentioned that an internal Microsoft calendar listed June 3, 2009 as the planned release date of Windows 7 which would just been in less than 10 months from today on.

According to the source Microsoft will release a first public beta on October 27 at the Professional Developer’s Conference. If those information are correct the beta phase of Windows 7 would be about 7-8 months which is a month or two less than the beta latest for Windows XP and about half the time for Windows Vista. That would make sense because Microsoft surely wanted to reduce the beta phase from being 15 months to something less than that and a cut in half would be a great achievement.

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It is clear since day one that Microsoft is using a different approach to communicating Windows 7. One could say they are extremely tight-lipped and do not reveal more than necessary to the public which includes online and offline press. The approach is not without risks and one of the greatest is that not saying anything about a new operating system leaves room for speculations, rumors and fake news like those fake Windows 7 Videos on Youtube.

Chris Flores is explaining in a blog post entitled Communicating Windows 7 why Microsoft is using this approach for their next operating system:

So, why the change in approach? We know that when we talk about our plans for the next release of Windows, people take action. As a result, we can significantly impact our partners and our customers if we broadly share information that later changes. With Windows 7, we’re trying to more carefully plan how we share information with our customers and partners. This means sharing the right level of information at the right time depending on the needs of the audience. For instance, several months ago we began privately sharing our preliminary plans for Windows 7 with software and hardware partners who build on the Windows platform. This gave them an opportunity to give us feedback and gave us the opportunity to incorporate their input into our plans. As the product becomes more complete, we will have the opportunity to share our plans more broadly.

One aspect that Chris forgot to mention though is the public perception of Windows Vista. Many Windows XP users do not feel that it is necessary to change to Windows Vista yet and an announcement that Windows 7 would be faster, better looking, more secure and coming out in the near future would definitely have an impact on their decision. The lack of information prevents that users make that decision based on the next Microsoft operating system.

As I said earlier not speaking about Windows 7 will inevitably lead to false rumors and Chris responds to the rumor that Windows 7 will make use of a new kernel.

Contrary to some speculation, Microsoft is not creating a new kernel for Windows 7. Rather, we are refining the kernel architecture and componentization model introduced in Windows Vista. While these changes will increase our engineering agility, they will not impact the user experience or reduce application or hardware compatibility. In fact, one of our design goals for Windows 7 is that it will run on the recommended hardware we specified for Windows Vista and that the applications and devices that work with Windows Vista will be compatible with Windows 7.

Last but not least he clears the confusing three years after Windows Vista statement by Bill Gates when asked about the release of the Microsoft operating system. Windows Vista was released on January 30, 2007 to the general public which would mean that the release date of Windows 7 will be most likely in the first quarter of 2010.

We are well into the development process of Windows 7, and we’re happy to report that we’re still on track to ship approximately three years after the general availability of Windows Vista. As always, we will be releasing early builds of Windows 7 prior to its general availability as a means to gain feedback, but we’re not yet ready to discuss timing and specific plans for any Beta releases. In the meantime, customers can confidently continue with their Windows Vista deployment plans.

It obviously is just an estimation and anyone working in IT knows that things sometimes happen that impact a release date dramatically. As of know this is the only information that we got.

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There has been some confusion lately about the release date of Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 7. Some sources claimed that 2010 was finally announced as the official release data while others rebuked that story saying that Microsoft did not yet make such an announcement.

It turned out that the 2010 – and 2009 – release dates were based on interpretations or Microsoft press releases, especially the phrase “Development is scoped to three years” caused some confusion. Some sources simply added three years to the release of Windows Vista and assumed that this would be the official Windows 7 release date.

One should understand that the production phase does not end with development. There is much more to it like marketing, producing enough units, worldwide shipping, translations and much more that will probably extend the period quite a bit.

It should also be noted that three years can mean anything from 1095 days to 1459 days which is just one day short of four years. To conclude the article; There is no official Windows 7 release data yet and it is very likely that there will be none anytime soon.

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It seems that Microsoft tried to ignore all the speculations and rumors about a soon to be published Windows Vista successor for as long as they could until they finally gave in and confirmed to Softpedia that the official release year for Windows 7 will be 2010, not 2009 and not 2011 as some other blogs and magazines have suggested.

Microsoft explained that it would deliver Windows 7 three years after the consumers launch of Vista. “We are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA. The specific release date will be determined once the company meets its quality bar for release,” a Microsoft spokesperson revealed to Softpedia via email.

What does it mean for the consumer ? 2010 is still two years ahead which will give consumers enough time to switch to Windows Vista or sit it out with Windows XP until Windows 7 arrives. If you want my personal opinion, I don’t think it’s very smart from a consumer standpoint to release the new operating system in 2010 which feels awfully early.

Microsoft might think otherwise and analyst might prove them right again.

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