The new rules for calculating Windows ship dates

It wasn't long ago that whenever Microsoft gave a ship-date target for a new Windows release, IT managers would add anywhere between a few months to a couple years to it when figuring their upgrade schedules.

As crazy as it sounds, the new way to calculate when a new Windows release will ship seems to be to subtract a few months or even a year from what the Softies are promising publicly.

Case in point: Windows 7. Microsoft officials have been insisting for the past year-plus that early 2010 is the intended ship target. The only problem: That's not what company representatives have been telling customers, OEM partners and a select few others. Certain individuals are expecting Windows 7 in 2009 -- anywhere from mid-year to Q3. At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this week, one Microsoft exec told session attendees publicly that Windows 7 is tracking to be released to manufacturing in mid-2009, so as to enable back-to-school preloads.

Windows officials have been trying to dampen expectations so that if they ship in 2009, they'll be considered to have delivered early. If they hit their worst-case date, they'll still be "on time."

The Windows team already showed its hand here with Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). Publicly, the company (once it acknowledged the existence of SP1) said SP1 would be out by the end of the first quarter of 2008. The actual ship date: Mid-December 2007. Not a huge difference, but enough to be important to some customers and partners.

Being "early" doesn't seem problematic until you consider consumers and business users who are trying to plan when and if to upgrade to a new version of Windows or to delay their PC purchases a bit so as to be able to buy Windows 7 preloaded on a new machine instead of Vista. These folks aren't working with good/real data in crafting their future purchasing plans.

Here are the whisper dates for Windows 7 I've been hearing:

• Feature-complete, public Beta 1: The week before Christmas 2008 (Microsoft is saying Q1 2009)
• No public Beta 2 (Microsoft isn't saying whether there will be a Beta 2)
• Release Candidate: Q1/Q2 2009 (Microsoft is saying there will be "a release candidate" but offering no due date)
• RTM: Mid-2009 (Microsoft is saying "early 2010")

(There are a few wild cards to factor in here, like possible law suits, OEMs not being able to preload in time to make a certain launch goal, etc. But these are the dates I've been hearing through the grapevine for the month-plus.)

When anyone asks me whether they should buy a new PC now or wait, I tell them I'm banking on getting a new Windows 7 PC next fall. What are your ship-date expectations for Windows 7, at this point?