Maybe we'll see Win 7 and Office 14 launch together, after all

It's hard to know what to believe any more, with Microsoft's new policy of telling customers products are going to ship months later than they actually believe they will.

But there's increasing evidence -- and, admittedly, some guesswork on my part -- pointing to Microsoft launching Windows 7 and Office 14 together later this fall.

Microsoft officials won't comment on anything to do with Office 14. But enthusiast Stephen Chapman has been gathering lots of interesting O14 bits and pieces as of late on his UX Evangelist site. He's got some internal roadmap slides that show O14 shipping in either 2009 or 2010 (based on your interpretation of the hard-to-fathom timelines). And he has evidence that Microsoft is going to fold its Grava educational-authoring tools into the next Office release -- which is totally believable, given how OneNote came to be part of the Office suite.

Given that Microsoft still (as of mid-January) has yet to provide even a Technology Adoption Partner (TAP) build to its O14 testers -- according to what I've heard, anyway -- the rumblings that the Softies aren't going to ship O14 until 2010 have been growing. Microsoft privately is telling Office testers the same thing they're now pushing publicly about Windows 7 -- that it still might ship in 2009 but it also could slip into early 2010.

Based on tips and conversations I'm having with testers, my new bet is even if Windows 7 is ready to  be released to manufacturing in late summer, Microsoft may end up delaying the official "launch" -- and possibly also retail availability -- until October or so. (Another indicator: The deployment kit for Windows 7, which is in beta, is named "Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010." If Microsoft really were going to launch Windows 7 this summer, wouldn't the business-deployment toolkit be christened "MDT 2009?") My other related educated guess: O14 may end up "launching" right around or slightly before it actually RTMs... maybe also in October 2009.

Launching Windows and Office together is not unprecedented, as anyone who remembers the business launch of Windows Vista and Office 2007 knows. And with pressures to curb costs hitting the Redmondians, just like everyone else, one launch is definitely cheaper than two....