Windows 7 to be on shelves before the end of the year?

by Justin Horn on Apr 30th, 2009 @ 3:50 pm

Microsoft today released Windows 7 Release Candidate 1:

We hope you are as excited as we are about today’s milestone, as we make the Microsoft Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) broadly available for download to managed Beta program participants, including MSDN and TechNet subscribers. If you are not among those who participated in one of the managed Beta programs, you only have to wait until Tuesday, May 5, when the RC will be available through the Customer Preview Program.

And when can we expect the final version of Windows 7 ?

The final engineering milestone is the release to manufacturing (RTM), typically 3-5 months after the RC. We believe the product is high quality and to date have received very positive feedback. This might result in RTM delivery before the 3-5 months timeframe. Ultimately, you’ll decide the quality and assess the delivery once you download and use the RC. Customer and partner feedback will determine how quickly we release.

So it looks like they are on or ahead of schedule. If it goes RTM by July then we should see it on the shelves as early as August. Should be interesting to see if it comes out at the same time as Snow Leopard and Microsoft and Apple can go head to head!

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