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Mary-Jo Foley
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New signs point to Windows 7 debuting earlier than expected

By | October 22, 2008, 9:22am PDT

Summary: Could it be that Windows 7 is even earlier than even the most optimistic date watchers are predicting and that it’s on track to RTM before mid-2009?

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times on this blog, Microsoft privately is telling some of its customers that Windows 7 will be out in the latter half of 2009.

It’s true, as Microsoft’s spokespeople contend, that the “public guidance” around Windows 7 hasn’t changed; Microsoft marketeers continue to state that Windows 7 is on track to ship three years after Windows Vista was released to market (and cite that target date as January 2010). As a number of Microsoft watchers, yours truly included, have noted, Microsoft is NOT going to release another version of Windows client in January again unless there’s a awfully compelling reason to do so. The best time to RTM a new Windows release is summer if you hope to get it preloaded on back-to-school and holiday PCs.

With all this as a given, it’s not surprising that OEMs are starting to admit that they expect to ship Windows 7 on new machines in the latter half of 2009.

I’m also not surprised that Microsoft is dropping hints about Windows 7 being ready sooner rather than later. As blogger Long Zheng noted, text on the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2008 site currently states that Windows 7 will ship before the next WinHEC is held. The exact wording:

“Be one of the first to see what’s new in Windows 7 and be among a select few to receive a pre-beta build of Windows 7.  Join us as WinHEC 2008 – Register today. WinHEC is the only chance for you to engage with the team at this level – there is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released.”

The plot thickens further. When I searched the Web for “WinHEC 2009,” it looks like the next WinHEC seems to be slated for New Orleans from May 3-7, 2009 (although Microsoft potentially could postpone next year’s WinHEC to late fall, like it did this year).

New signs point to Windows 7 debuting earlier than expected

Could it be that Windows 7 is even earlier than even the most optimistic date watchers are predicting and that it’s on track to RTM before mid-2009? If it is, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the broadscale, public Windows 7 Beta 1, which I’m still hearing is set for mid-December, to be the only public beta for the next Windows release.

Understandably, Microsoft isn’t commenting on any of these latest date predictions. The company doesn’t need to do anything more to throw cold water on Vista than its officials already have….

I’ll be interested to see how forthcoming (or not) Microsoft officials are about Windows 7’s due date at next week’s Professional Developers Conference.

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Topics

Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Corp., WinHEC

Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

Disclosure

Mary-Jo Foley

Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.

Biography

Mary-Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 25 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.

Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.

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RE: New signs point to Windows 7 debuting earlier than expected
dfwekrwe5301-24353688597717513211197799794676 11th Nov
bfgaua,good post!
View in thread
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I saw a pre-release annonuced on the opass.org site
Been_Done_Before 22nd Oct 2008
They were saying.. "be the first to see windows 7".

I might go to the one in orlando.
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RE: New signs point to Windows 7 debuting earlier than expected
svanny 22nd Oct 2008
Asia WinHEC is held each November. That must be what Long Zheng is blogging about.
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Enterprise customers could receive Vista...
Anton Philidor Updated - 22nd Oct 2008
... the November before the January general release. Given the need of the OEMs for holiday sales, November may be the anniversary date, though that doesn't leave much time.

As an aside, Mr. Ballmer couldn't answer that there was no need to wait rather than buying Vista because Windows 7 was no different, no better. But he can say that Windows 7 will be a substantial improvement on an already solid product. And that's what he did say.



Microsoft states its view that Vista is a success on both the technical and commercial levels. And by any standards other than an antagonist's the company is likely correct.
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Given that Vista is a PIG, and that anything Vista is tied to MS failures,
DonnieBoy 22nd Oct 2008
they will release Windows 7 as soon as they can.
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And one day, you may actually understand what
GuidingLight 22nd Oct 2008
everyone is talking about today.
But of course, by then we will be talking about something else, while you still dwell on the now dismissed criticisms of Vista.

Get up to date, son.
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No he won't - your optomistic...nt
TheBottomLineIsAllThatMatters 23rd Oct 2008
nt
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Who cares what they are talking about
tcrimmins1953@... 23rd Oct 2008
Bottom line is that Windows 7 is probably going to require even newer, faster hardware, and perhaps even more memory. Why should anyone retire perfectly good hardware with XP that does what they need already? I should buy into Vista because Microsoft says it's better, and Windows 7 is better yet? Does Balmer know more about what I do and need than I do??
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Look at it this way...
vulpine@... 23rd Oct 2008
... Windows 7 can't be worse than Vista, can it?

I'm willing to bet 7 will outsell Vista in the first month
simply because people will either want to leapfrog a
notoriously bad release or get out of an OS they can
hardly stand.
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RE: Look at it this way...
The Ash Man Updated - 23rd Oct 2008
Outsell Vista in the first month? Ok, so they have to sell 200 million copies of 7 in 30 days. That's a ridiculous statement. More of the negative Vista myth being spread here. Try researching the facts first. Vista sales way outdo what XP did in the first year and two years, hardly a failure. Yes, the PC market is bigger, but to call it notoriously bad is not correct. It is true that Vista is slow if put on lesser hardware and that should have been made clearer by Microsoft and PC Manufacturers instead of trying to have it both ways. I prefer OS X in a lot of ways, but Leopard has a lot of flaws that have not been fixed. They have tweaked some things to improve it, but there are still glaring shortcomings. Vista is more complete and reliable. Hardly "buggy" as claimed by many with an online opinion.

Thanks for the story Mary!
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I think they were joking
gazzawazza 23rd Oct 2008
Vista ain't great...and sales figures, the vast majority are through the OEM channel so you can't really quote that as a success.

I actually quite like Vista and run it (Ultimate 64) on a couple of machines - have had my fair share of issues but it is generally stable now in my experience...but there is very little reason for a business, especially a large corporate (and trust me I work with a few) to move to Vista over XP, so a large number just re-install XP over Vista when the box arrives, or have the vendor do it at the factory.

Now W7 - I think MS still has a serious job to do in selling it to the corporates - most of their software runs quite happily on XP and does not need any more resources than XP can make use of (i.e memory limits, etc). There is no big push for 64 bit apps on the desktop so that won't get people upgrading yet either. The main push will simply be when MS refuse to support XP anymore, and we've seen that date slowly move back. If W7 comes along, is stable and doesn't have the same initial bugginess of Vista (either because of the OS or OEM h/w drivers, corporates don't really care whose fault it is) then maybe, just maybe it will remain on machines through the OEM route and get a critical mass.
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re: " . . . worse than Vista . . . "
JLHenry Updated - 23rd Oct 2008
... Windows 7 can't be worse than Vista, can it?
.
.
.
Don't ever underestimate the ability of normal humans, when at the bottom, to ask for a shovel . . .


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Speeding up the Win7 release--and why
gypkap@... 23rd Oct 2008
I suspect that Windows 7 will really be Windows Vista SP2. Vista SP1 was such a massive upgrade (3 reboots during the process, IIRC) that I suspect that most of Vista was replaced at that time, but bugs crept in with the upgrade.

Vista SP1 does seem to be stable--no blue screens, though the startup repair happens more often than I would like--every couple of months. So far it's aways worked, but it's still unnerving.

I suspect Windows 7 is being sold quickly to pay for the fixes to SP1. Hopefully MS won't rush it out the door before all needed changes (probably ones most of us will never see) are made and thoroughly tested in the real world.
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Grow up.
deowll 23rd Oct 2008
Up date never or when you want to.

Other than a modest face lift I doubt if much is going to change between Windows 7 and Vista.

They're mainly dropping the name because they let the opposition define what it means.

Of course if Windows 7 were the best OS ever created or that ever will be created a lot of people posting here would still call it bleep because they hate MS.

The quality of OS has nothing to do with it.
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Considering I'm one of the people you're talking about...
vulpine@... Updated - 24th Oct 2008
... I feel insulted.

I hate Microsoft's products because of more factors
than just the name. Their history has been rife with
defective operating systems and software pretty much
from day one; but I also have to say that Microsoft
alone isn't at fault. Their biggest problem is that they
grew too big too fast and made themselves the de
facto target of every virus writer and malware
developer in the world for over 20 years.

Despite all of this, Windows XP is probably still their
best operating system ever, followed closely by Office
2003. They proved they could put reliability and ease-
of-use (comparatively speaking) into their OS and even
a reasonably secure Office package that became a
default standard that other non-Microsoft office
applications built to.

But what did Microsoft do? Instead of building on
something that worked, they decided they needed to
play Catch Up to Apple with Vista while trying to
eliminate software piracy by assuming every user's a
pirate until proving otherwise. Immediately they made
Vista into the most buggy and annoying OS since
Windows ME. To make matters worse, they also
changed Office to the extent that their once-
standardized .doc format became incompatible with all
external office applications and even incompatible with
former Office documents; forcing prior Office users to
upgrade or new Office adopters to downgrade their
new documents for compatibility with the older Office
app.

Why do I hate Microsoft? It's not just the name, but all
the problems--both internal and external--that I have
experienced using their products over the years.
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GL, Vista is a pig, as far as I'm concerned.
vulpine@... 23rd Oct 2008
After several attempts to make it work on two different
machines, it still won't work right. Repeated installs on
clean drives rarely gives me enough capability to even
attempt to download additional drivers and updates...
This is supposed to be an improvement over XP?

I admit I'm probably an isolated case; but to me Vista is
worthless if it won't even work.
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Your hardware turn of the century?
hjacobson Updated - 23rd Oct 2008
I've not had your experience with recent hardware (within the last 3 years), unless hardware was broken or not up to spec.

Oh, yeah. Don't trust bootleg Vista.

- Harry
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RE: Your hardware turn of the century?
richdave 23rd Oct 2008
Well, yeah! I do have one machine, PIII, 128mb ram, that runs WinXP, kind of. Linux, with the latest kernel and configured for older hardware, zips along very nicely on this machine. I also have a Sempron, 2GB ram, 64MB Nvidia video, and Linux pretty much rocks on that. Probably way underpowered for Vista and almost certainly for Win7. Microsoft is not the only game in town.
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Vista experience
rodonn 23rd Oct 2008
OEM Vista HE install, brand new this year kit, replete with sticker.

And it's a hog. Takes up too much disk space, needs min of 2Gig of RAM, has needless 'eye candy' bloat. Installing SP2 involved me hacking the CLI to turn things off that the OEM install has as standard.

Only reason I've not downgraded to XP 64 is that it's such a nuisance getting the XP Bios, XP driver et al.

I raise a glass to your wonderful Vista experience, but to me,it's reminded me of my 1990s Red Hat days...
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wahuh?
rtk 23rd Oct 2008
Installing SP2 involved me hacking the CLI to turn things off that the OEM install has as standard.

SP2 is not publicly available and doesn't require "hacking the Command Line Interface", just a registry entry.

Also, there's no such thing as an "XP BIOS".

My guess is, it's your mad H@x0r skillz causing your problems.
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The bad news is, Harry...
vulpine@... 23rd Oct 2008
The machine is barely a year old and it's a box version of
Vista Ultimate... a legal box version.
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Sounds like a skill level issue....
bentedgz 23rd Oct 2008
Or a really extreme exageration.
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Not a skill issue...
Wolfie2K3 23rd Oct 2008
...More like a driver issue.

Installing Vista is not rocket science. Just insert the DVD, boot to the disc and answer a few simple questions and Vista's installer dumps the whole thing onto the hard drive. Really difficult..NOT!

It sounds like he's got driver issues. He's got devices - probably critical ones - like his NIC that don't come with drivers out of the box. If that's the case, he'd have a hard time connecting to the 'net to get working Vista drivers for anything.

Maybe he should be downloading drivers from another (working) box and burning them on a CD or popping them onto a USB thumb drive and then installing the hardware drivers from there.
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You're doing something wrong
notsofast 23rd Oct 2008
I can't even imagine what that is, however, because I've never experienced that issue. The only major problem I had was an issue with Ghost screwing up something, which forced a reinstall of the OS (or removing Ghost, which wasn't an option)....actually I'm sure I could have fixed it without a reinstall, but it was a new build with very little software on it, so an hour of reinstalling Windows and apps was the best solution.
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Technical knowledge ?
pounder_arthur@... 24th Oct 2008
A typical "I would like to be" more technical than I really am series of comments.

Or maybe just someone banging their gums for the sake of it ....

My daughter who is 6 has managed to install Vista on her little IBM X31 with no issues .. it's working well with Office 2007.

So please tell us what is your issue

AP
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Honestly, can someone just ban this clown?
Sleeper Service 23rd Oct 2008
Seriously. It was funny to begin with but we shouldn't be encouraging those with a delusional psychosis.
  • Flagged
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LOL - nt
TheBottomLineIsAllThatMatters 23rd Oct 2008
nt
  • Flagged
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Doubtful...
Wolfie2K3 23rd Oct 2008
All he'd have to do is sign up on ZDNet under another nom-de-plume... Back to square one..
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Works fine for me
notsofast 23rd Oct 2008
I'm guessing you don't run it, you have old hardware or you haven't run it in over a year.

I've run it on an Athlon 3000+, X800 and 2G of ram (same rig I used for XP) and it ran like a champ.

I've run Business, Homepremium and Ultimate on an e4300 with 2GB, 4gb, 6gb and 8GB. No real change in performance, though it will cache more programs if you give it more ram.
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I Hate DonnieBoy (NT)
DonnieBoyHater 23rd Oct 2008
NT
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Nothing goes in the build that not a potential RTM
graham.lv 22nd Oct 2008
According to the 'boss' & co over on the Win 7 blog nothing is allowed to be added to the 'build' that is not considered a final release.

So, maybe this version of Windows will only need a short beta to pick up anything missed. But getting it out to the public would still be a stretch before the Xmas season - say 6 weeks before.

It may be possible if PC makers can build in advance and then just have to mass install and ship.

However, I think unless MS cancel support for XP, it may be in use till 2020! XP is almost like an Apple 'can-do-no-wrong-with-overpriced-rubbish' success story!
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They might release it as RTM
thelivo 22nd Oct 2008
But in true MS fashion, it almost certainly is a relatively crappy Beta and they will be patching some serious holes for the first year.
When will people understand that Microsoft never have and probably never will release software that is truly fit for purpose first time.
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MS has already announced ...
mwagner@... 23rd Oct 2008
... that consumer support for XP ends in 2009 and enterprise support ends in 2014. What this REALLY means is that security support will continue until 2014 but not beyond.

MS will not miss the holidays in 2009. They cannot afford to do this to their OEMs twice in a row.
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Microsoft has never made a holiday release
Randalllind Updated - 23rd Oct 2008
Not that I remember any way. They did release Windows 2.0 in December 1987 but,that was before I got a PC.

http://xenomorph.net/microsoft-windows/windows-release-dates/
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Balmer rush
SMFX 22nd Oct 2008
Just what we need. Microsoft rushing another release, striping out features left and right to cobble something together, just because Balmer has FINALLY admitted that Vista was a marketting flop and he wants to regain ground.

Sounds like another shot in the foot than a shot in the arm.

-SMFX
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If This Isn't Better Than Vista
itanalyst2@... 22nd Oct 2008
Say bye-bye to the market stranglehold.
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Agreed
rjohn05 22nd Oct 2008
And I have a feeling they know this.
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If you haven't looked at Vista ...
mwagner@... 23rd Oct 2008
... since early 2007, you haven't seen Vista.

With any Pentium HT processor three years old or newer, and 2GB of RAM, Vista is rock-solid and a good performer.
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And your point is ??
tcrimmins1953@... 23rd Oct 2008
Why should I consider a new OS that requires me to abandon otherwise perfectly good hardware?
If I need a new computer, I'll go the MacOS route this time around. It'll probably be viable longer than anything MS fudges together.
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Really, your i486 machine's due for retirement
hjacobson Updated - 23rd Oct 2008
The sad news for you is Mac OS X's 10.2 (10/2002), 10.3 (10/2003), 10.4 (04/2006), 10.5 (10/2007) all required abandonment of "otherwise perfectly good hardware".

Whereas the earliest Windows XP machines, circa 2001, will load XP SP3 (04/2008).

The term "perfectly good hardware" of course is in the eye of the user.

Which company you say has the longer viable operating system?

- H
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Not True
clarnT 23rd Oct 2008
My PowerBook DVI (667MHz) came with 10.2 in 2002 and is
running 10.4.11 just fine today.
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Not quite right....
Deanbar 24th Oct 2008
Although I no longer use it, the Claris CAD program I bought
in 1989 still runs on my OS X 10.4.11, albeit in Classic mode,
and other older software will still run in OS X. Quite a lot of
old software will still run in OS X.
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Per the two people directly before me, Apple seems to last longer.
vulpine@... 24th Oct 2008
Don't get me wrong, I personally know of people still
using Win98; but on the average, Apple's OS X 10.5
still runs well on PPC machines G4 or later (circa 2002)
whereas Vista leaves behind any x86 machine prior to
2007 unless they were high-end gaming or
workstation builds.

Even 10-yr-old 1st-gen iMacs are capable of running
10.4 reliably. Oh, true, Apple switched to OS X in 2001,
leaving behind OS9 software, but until 10.5 that same
OS9 software was useable in the Classic mode,
something I was able to prove by running Adobe
Photoshop 2.5(circa Feb.1993) on my Aluminum iMac
(circa Aug.2007); something nearly impossible to do,
even in WinXP.

Windows has consistently touted its "backwards
compatibility" but it has never been much more than
words, while for Apple it was demonstrable fact.
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HT & Dual Core
zboyles 23rd Oct 2008
Vista, in even beta builds, handled multicore cpus wonderfully. The system felt way more responsive immediately. I remember loading Vista beta 1 onto a very new, very expensive Lenovo tablet that came with XP. It started working almost twice as fast.
As a .NET developer I can also say that behind the scenes there are huge changes that were not experienced instantly by the public. Many companies, large and small have benefited from this though.
In 2004 Microsoft went through a massive change in the way the build software. I would almost say it was a movement there. Customers started to become very important in the design process. Community input really skyrocketed and they no longer acted as if what they thought was needed was what was needed. This impacted developers first because it really started with the development of the .NET 2.0 framework alongside Visual Studio 2005. Vista took much advantage over .NET 2.0 and most developers were just diving in while Vista was born. This lead to many of the benefits of Vista going unnoticed unless you were med-large or enterprise businesses with internal developer(s) who bleeding edge.
The .NET 3.5 framework really is a great accomplishment and along side that is Microsoft's flavor of AJAX. You throw that along with Silverlight and the benefits are enormous. Say what you will but it doesn't change the fact that Microsoft is building a huge single platform to develop on which the solution can then be deployed to a number of targets. Not only does this merge the lines between a Windows application and Web application but goes further still. You now have the ability to provide Flash like applications with the same .NET code. If that's not big enough for you there is the extension for the .NET 3.5 framework, XNA Studio which allows the same code for a Windows app/game to also work with the Xbox 360 as well as the Zune.
Finally, the Office Suite built on OpenXML is, well, completely open. I can write applications in any language to build a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation and more. Template generation is huge for enterprises and it is very simple to do. You combine that with SharePoint and things get almost too powerful.

There will always be criticism and I hope there is, otherwise it would be a stale environment as it once was. As Mary J. mentions about the Windows release date moving in the opposite direction as it always has, can't you at least recognize that something is changing..? Obviously as we aren't close to target we don't know if it will all pan out but it still leaves the question "What's going on in Seattle?".
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You're special...
vulpine@... 24th Oct 2008
... you have to be. You say Vista beta 1 was better and
faster than XP when every single published reviewer
benchmarked Vista against XP and proved Vista was
slower on every machine tested at the time.

This statement alone invalidates the majority of your
comment.

What's even stranger is the fact that a .Net software
developer, using Vista at the time, tried an Apple
MacBook for his development work, and hasn't looked
back. He now owns 2 Macs of his own (a Mac Pro and a
MacBook Pro) and has given his first MacBook to his
youngest daughter and another to his wife; converting
his entire family off of Windows. (Admittedly, his wife
isn't exactly enthused yet, but she's only had it about 2
weeks.)

Nearly everything you describe seems to be counter to
popular opinion (except for the few Zealots out there)
who have declared Vista to be annoying (even Ballmer
has said it was intended to be) and I know many people
who patently avoid any website or online business that
openly uses the .NET framework (and I'm not talking
just Apple users, either.) In fact, by most reports I have
read, Google's WebApps have exceeded .NET useage
figures despite having WebApps up for less than half
the time.

Even your description of OpenXML is debatable,
shutting out nearly every other Open office application
and even prior versions of MS Office itself. This is
hardly an Open format. There is still discussion and
accusations out that Microsoft somehow bought
the OOXML ISO standard.

No, Microsoft is still attempting to use its monopoly
power to the detriment of the end user, which is why
an ever-increasing number of people, industries and
governments are abandoning them for other platforms.
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Re:
notsofast 23rd Oct 2008
Too many variables, but if the economy wasn't going into a downturn, which will likely cause companies to delay buying new desktops, it would mean nothing. Companies aremoving to vista, and if not for the economy, that trend would definitely accelerate over the next year.

Everytime I post on this topic, I must add that a year after win2000 support ended, it still have 48% of the market, while xp had well under 40%....and that was almost 4 years after XP was released.

Corporate adoption takes time. Always has, and it always will.
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Why upgrade?
9Nails 24th Oct 2008
I agree to what you had said. But I still think that it all falls back to one thing: What are the compelling reasons to upgrade?

With XP SP2, especially, we got great stability, good security, solid 3rd party support and performance. XP was leaps ahead of Windows 98 SE. And it justified the arguments to upgrade.

I would equate Windows Vista to that awkward gap which Windows 2000 was placed in.

But 7 needs to be a better XP. We have the stability, security and performance that business needs. What else can Microsoft bring to help us justify the upgrade?
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You mean there's something else out there?
9Nails 24th Oct 2008
What's more popular than a 32-Bit Windows platform? (Maybe 64-Bit Windows?)

I mean, just about any hardware that you would want to buy ships with drivers for which system? We know Windows is a given. Mac OS-X is questionable. You'll have to carefully read the box, but might find support about 50% of the time. But Linux is like finding a four leaf clover.

We live in a Windows World. Microsoft Windows XP is competing with Microsoft Windows Vista (or Windows Seven). Which ever way this goes, Microsoft still holds the market.
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"Microsoft still holds the market."
vulpine@... Updated - 26th Oct 2008
A shrinking market; whose fall is accelerating on a
yearly basis.

One of the things you seem to have missed is the fact
that most USB or firewire peripherals don't need
drivers to run on a Mac. This includes devices such as
cameras, printers, scanners, hard drives, etc...

What's really funny is finding devices (like my
Westinghouse LCD display) that claims "Certified for
Windows Vista?" This is absolutely silly! Why would
anyone want to spend the money to put a certification
statement on a piece of physical hardware that should
be completely platform agnostic? Does this
certification mean the display is going to work any
better with Vista than it will with OS X?

No, Microsoft goes out of its way to 'convince' you and
everybody else that their products are the only ones
worthy by linking unrelated hardware to an operating
system. OS X can use almost any device a Windows box
can use. Only when a device is designed specifically to
run under Windows will there be an issue, and even
then there is usually a workaround. As yet, in many
years of using OS X and Apple products, I've only found
one piece of hardware that I can't use on my Mac...
because it specifically looks for Windows and refuses
to recognize any other connections; not even Linux.
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And when it comes out in mid-2010...
TheWerewolf 22nd Oct 2008
...which is roughly when the *official* release date is supposed to be - all the pundits will make a big deal about how 'late' it is.

Even the 'mid-2009' date is highly speculative - BillG said it once, but he's not running that anymore and was promptly corrected by actual Windows managers. The sales people are 'suggesting' a mid-2009 date, but of course, they're trying to keep people using Windows.

Now we're ratcheting the date even FURTHER forward to early-2009.

Here's a thought - why not let Microsoft just announce the actual date they plan to ship when they're ready to and stop playing the date-game? You're setting up some really unrealistic expectations in people which, if we turn back to Vista, result in some pretty major disappointments when they turn out to be wrong - and ruins the fun when they're right.

It'll get here when it gets here.

In the case of Vista, Microsoft never officially gave a ship date until Sept 2006 when they announced the Business version would ship in October, and the Home version would ship in Jan 2007. Any other date was speculation from the press - but a LOT of people took those as real dates and argued that Vista was late when in fact, it was only late relative to a made up date Microsoft had no involvement in setting.
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RE: Will Microsoft offer a rebate to all those who bought Vista
manny.b 22nd Oct 2008
Anything has to be better than Vista and Microsoft
should admit this and offer Windows 7 either free or
at a 90% discount to all those who bought it for what
it was supposed to do. You need something that is
capable of running XP just to power up Vista without
it running any other applications and there are still
a lot of applications out there that it won't run.
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RE: New signs point to Windows 7 debuting earlier than expected
dfwekrwe5301-24353688597717513211197799794676 11th Nov
bfgaua,good post!

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ie8 fix

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ie8 fix