Now that we know that Windows 7 will be hitting us sometime this year in final form, now all the questions are aimed at narrowing down the date.
We heard from Acer executives that Windows 7 will be out on October 23, which sounds plausible, but there’s no other evidence to back it up. Today we have a couple other new entries in the guessing game.
Gathering statements made by Microsoft employees and charting it on a calendar, ComputerWorld figures that Windows 7 will hit RTM (release to manufacturing) on August 11. The magazine believes that if Microsoft follows the same schedule it set for Windows XP, the new OS should be out on October 11.
The next guess comes from long-time Windows journalist Paul Thurrott, who wrote in the final part of his Windows 7 RC review, “Microsoft also says it will finalize Windows 7 in mid-August and deliver it to the public in time for the 2009 holiday season. I can tell you, however, that the general availability date is a lot more specific than that: You'll be able to get the final version of Windows 7 publicly on October 15, 2009, according to the current schedule.”
While we don’t have any hard dates yet, and we won’t until Microsoft is ready to tell, it looks like everyone is betting on making it out well before Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S.
