Windows 7 Retail Boxes Showing Up in Stores

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It's here! You just can't buy it yet.

It's just two and a half weeks until Windows 7 officially hits stores worldwide, overwriting Windows Vista as the main operating system sold on PCs. The launch of Windows 7 is no big secret, and some OEMs are even allowed to sell systems with the full OS early.

With such a big release, Microsoft is naturally shipping off product to retailers as you read this. In fact, one of Microsoft's first retail shipments have already hit stores.

Engadget was sent a photo from an unnamed electronics store in Chicago showing a brown box with a red sticker that reads "STREET DATE Do Not Sell or Display This Product Before October 22, 2009."

So there it is, the real deal right before your eyes.

(Image credit: Engadget)

 

Excited?

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
22 Comments Comment from the forums
  • comp_builder22586
    Can't Wait!
    Reply
  • Nice move of the shop empoyee. Hope they don't get caught;p
    Reply
  • touchdowntexas13
    going to the campus computer store to pick one up today! they told me they wouldn't have windows 7 for students until November or December but I called today and they have it in stock!

    looks like I will be running a major date back up today...
    Reply
  • skykaptain
    touchdowntexas13going to the campus computer store to pick one up today! they told me they wouldn't have windows 7 for students until November or December but I called today and they have it in stock!
    I Dl'ed mine from MSDN a month ago. Lov'n it so far.
    Reply
  • hellwig
    Waiting for my Pre-order keys, which I suppose I won't get even a second early.

    Maybe Win 7 64-bit will be better with the driver support than Win XP Pro x64.
    Reply
  • visa
    Same here with the MSDN for my D630 work laptop. Tried both Enterprise x86 and Ultimate x64 and both installed in less than 30 minutes with all drivers accounted for. Pretty impressed so far also...
    Reply
  • rooket
    That's allright I already got a genuine key through legitimate channels. It's a real good operating system and I'd recommend it to anyone. I'm glad to finally ditch XP, it just feels old.
    Reply
  • HolyCrusader
    hellwig, driver support for Win7x64 is much better than it was for XP64, although ironically you have Vista64 to thank for that.

    That just got me thinking of something....

    Despite it's unpopularity, Vista it helped to bring 64-bit to the mainstream. Yea I know there were other 64-bit OS's out first, but how much did they really impact mainstream acceptance of 64-bit programming?. If it wasn't for Vista, hardware manufacturers would still only be making 32-bit drivers. That was part of Vista's problem when it first hit - hardware manufacturers dragging their feet getting new drivers programmed for it.
    Reply
  • dirtykid
    hellwigWaiting for my Pre-order keys, which I suppose I won't get even a second early.Maybe Win 7 64-bit will be better with the driver support than Win XP Pro x64.
    Having used the RC for many months: yes driver support is better (Nvidia was super early with WDDM 1.1), but some older printers / scanners likely still don't work x64.
    Reply
  • dirtykid
    Why am I advertising p r i n t e r s suddenly?
    Reply