istartedsomething

Windows 7 targets October 2009 RTM, retail soon after?

October 22nd, 2008 AEST by Long Zheng
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Connecting the dots is so fun. Usually I don’t speculate about release dates, especially if the only source is “I heard from my step-brother’s uncle who knows someone who works on Windows”, but I’m pretty confident about this one.

Twitter user “remtiwk” had pointed out to me something very interesting yesterday which only today I realized is not just bluff or a mistake. On the ever-changing WinHEC 2008 website now writes “there is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released”. Wikipedia then confirmed WinHEC was an annual event. This morning, Ed Bott links to an interview which the ASUS CEO is quoted as saying “in the second half of next year we will put Windows 7 on Eee PCs”.

If you put the two together then Windows 7 is scheduled to be released to manufacturing in late October 2009. Retail release should be a month or two after, so late November 2009, just before the holiday season.

Ninjas at Microsoft nodded at my guesstimations before quickly vanishing to do other ninja stuff.

30 Comments

  1. mrmckeb

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 2:20 pm

    This is good news. I think that it’ll be vastly more popular than Vista, even if in it’s heart it still is Vista (which may be the case from what I’ve read and seen). No I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Vista at all, it just got an unfair and perhaps unrecoverable amount of bad press.

    It will be nice to see Netbooks running Windows 7 too. Consistency between my systems makes me happy.

  2. dovella

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    I had noticed the same thing

  3. Yert

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 2:47 pm

    Several set this date as their mark,
    the news hounds circled like a shark.
    Soon it was hushed by a man named Sinofsky,
    who soon found a foe in a young Aussie.
    And thus about Windows 7 none were left in the dark.

    Not sure I have know how to pronounce Sinosky enough to rhyme with the name of the dark one, and I know the credit for this one isn’t just yours Long (I read the news from Bott first; however I think the ending sound of Aussie is better?). Thus continuing the evil Sinofsky meme.

  4. Dan

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    I like facts, but my gut feeling is July 7th, 2009. I just can’t get over how cool Windows 7 on 7/7 would be

  5. Chaitanya

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 4:28 pm

    @Yert
    I Like It! :-)
    @Dan
    Dude, we thought the same for 7th Harry Potter book. Did not happen.

  6. anonymuos

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 5:22 pm

    We will come to know maybe in PDC. Anyways, it was always supposed to RTM in late 2009 right?

  7. Long Zheng

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 5:24 pm

    @anonymuos: the rumors kept moving around, 2009, 2010, 2011.

  8. xaml

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    @Dan, your expectation is two years late. 7 7 7
    @Long… I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s November 2009 for businesses and January 2010 for general consumers.

  9. Anon for this one

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    I think you’re on the money Long. 3 years after Vista is a pretty good yardstick. RTM in late 2009 and released to customers in Jan 2010.

  10. dj_cityboy

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 10:45 pm

    nice Long, your jedi skills are far to powerful for micro-ninjas!

    peas
    cityboy

  11. Cuppa

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 10:54 pm

    WinHEC isn’t always held in November, though – it has been held in April/May for the last 3 years.

  12. Ray Cassick

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    So, how long will it take for hardware vendors to play catch up to this one?

  13. mrmckeb

    Oct 22nd, 2008 at 11:12 pm

    @Anon for this one
    I’d assume they’d get it out for the 2009 Christmas period. January isn’t really a good time to launch a product.

  14. Dan Neely

    Oct 23rd, 2008 at 1:30 am

    Everything I’ve heard says the driver model won’t be changing so existing vista drivers should work as is.

  15. graham.lv

    Oct 23rd, 2008 at 6:58 am

    The consumer version must be out in new PC’s and retail six weeks before Dec. 25 or it will flop. People have to much debt after Christmas. Look at it as their ‘opening weekend’ for films. That’s the big box office take. You also get a lot of people using it before any ‘bad’ word can spread.

    Business and institutions would prefer just before June 30, when budgets have to be spent and tax deductions taken into account. (Although this may differ in countries other than Australia.) However, corporate deploys usually wait for SP1 which may not come for a year.

    So, 6 weeks before Xmas 2009 for retail and between June 30, 2009 and June 30, 2010 for corporate.

    Vista did things arse about ofcourse. What Clint Eastwood called a ‘cluster fuck’ in ‘Heartbreak Ridge. :-)

  16. DouglasH

    Oct 23rd, 2008 at 10:58 am

    Long, that would entail that WinHec 2009 is delayed like 2008 was. Typically((sp)to lazy to look it up right now;) WinHec is a April May conference. and was delayed this year around the time that PDC 2008 was announced.

  17. Andre

    Oct 23rd, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    “the rumors kept moving around, 2009, 2010, 2011.”

    But rumors were also that 7 was going to be a major release.
    For me is 7 not a technical release but a strategical one, a warmed over Vista to get the XP lovers to buy a new version.

    Re-read this post on the E7 post:

    http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/10/15/engineering-7-a-view-from- the-bottom.aspx

    It says between the lines that 7 has been planned by a fixed release date, not by features. I’m keen to see how th market share will be between XP, Vista and 7. Those who have avoided Vista will not migrate from XP to Vista just because 7 has been released. I guess we will see some XP -> 7 and also Vista -> 7 migrations. So for Windows developers that means we will have to support 3 different versions.

    After 7 MS can’t release a new Windows version until XP usage has declined.

  18. Ninjas

    Oct 24th, 2008 at 12:40 am

    I think it’s really funny to read stuff like ” not a technical release but a strategical one, a warmed over Vista to get the XP lovers to buy a new version.” I mean, no one in these comments have any idea what is planned. What you see at PDC will blow you away. Also, don’t be so sure that what you see at PDC is everything there is to see ;)

    As well, I’m pretty sure what Long was implying was to consumers in 09… It is stupid to launch a product in January… Missing the holidays is DUMB.

  19. Andre

    Oct 24th, 2008 at 1:41 am

    @Ninjas: You mean the UI patch work they did with “Scenic”?

  20. Windows 7 Forums

    Oct 24th, 2008 at 2:15 am

    I’ll be amazed if it makes this release date if I’m honest – but I agree with the sentiments on here that it’s going to be much more popular than Vista (which I do quite like).

  21. Ninjas

    Oct 24th, 2008 at 4:40 am

    No. That looks boring compared to what is coming down the pipeline at PDC, and in the future.

  22. Tank Fursey

    Oct 24th, 2008 at 11:56 am

    Vista’s launch was Jan 2007 and three years later for Win7 is Jan 2010. If MS is 1 month early w/ Win7, that puts it in 2009. Whoooopeeee – what a scoop!

    So let’s be specific when we talk about 2009 – do we mean December 2009 (no big deal) or do we mean Sept, June, etc. 2009?

  23. Ninjas

    Oct 24th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    @Tank: To get from RTM to retail, if the process goes VERY quickly, 4 weeks. And for the best sales, the week before thanksgiving is best to get the computers with 7 for sale.

  24. Jeff B

    Oct 27th, 2008 at 6:30 am

    Hey guys, just to point out… with Vista, they did the same thing for PDC.

    Even though Microsoft’s PDC is an annual conference, they skipped it that year in lieu of “rallying” for a Vista RTM in the same time frame. Could be the same here, but that makes no date gurentees! So, well I guess what we *do* know is that we’ll see Win7 before HEC’2010 :)

  25. Anonymous

    Oct 28th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    dan,
    I think theres a possibility for 9 september 2009(9.9.09) if thats the way u r predicting d dates!

  26. Ray

    Jan 14th, 2009 at 11:17 am

    It’s all about the 3rd party DRIVERS. It took about a year before thery were availble for Vista. Now it’s not bad, my concern is will the same apply to Windows 7.

  27. TonyLi

    May 8th, 2009 at 4:25 am

    Found out a couple of wrinkles with the Win 7 RC. (1) Updated from Vista Utlimate on HP Compaq Presario
    (2) Windows Media Player – no sound – was okay on Vista
    (3) Yahoo Messenger 9.0 hangs
    (4) Webroot Window Washer hangs
    (5) Registry Mechanic throws all the dll’s up as it cant validate them
    Other than that its a cool Operating system. Wont do a clean install as the last time most of my non MS software failed to install “Wrong Operating System”
    (6) Kunbuntu 8.10 works just fine within this OS.

  28. m0nk3y

    May 29th, 2009 at 8:00 am

    @Andre
    They will be releasing another version of windows before XP dies out, I know a few people who have not been willing to even so much as try Windows 7 for fear of it looking like Vista. Not to mention they are planning a release of Windows 8 right about two years after the release of Windows 7.

  29. generation

    Jun 27th, 2009 at 2:55 pm

    Windows 7 will be made available for public download from october 22nd 2009.
    For More details check this URL :
    http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/home?os=win7

  30. John

    Jul 6th, 2009 at 7:41 am

    Im using windows 7 build 7264, when the RTM version comes out, will i be able to update without a clean install?

Leave a Reply

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