Windows 7 at build 7600: Achingly close to RTM?

Reports across the blogosphere attempt to confirm that Windows 7, after nearly two years of development and hysteria, has been released to manufacturing. It will be available to purchase before the end of the year in time for the holiday season. The current build string, as discovered by Internet phenomenon, Long Zheng, reads at:

7600.16384.090710-1945_x64fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULXFRER_EN_DVD.iso

This means:

• the final build is at 7600;
• the sub-string of 16384 maintains application compatibility with Vista, ensuring applications still run on Windows 7;
• the build is that of Ultimate edition, and marked Retail, suggesting this is the on-the-shelf copy.
• it was built on the 10th July 2009 at 7:45pm, so the Friday just gone;
• and that it is a 64-bit English version of the image.

Zheng---along with similar sites asking if it is Christmas, whether or not we are at war with Iran, or to simply ask if you are awesome---released a site asking if Windows 7 had RTM'd.

Also, there appears to be a digitally signed executable which has been verified as being build 7600 which, unless the authentication is broken which basically can't happen, it is legitimate.

I managed to get my hands on this executable file which is the setup.exe application, which kick-starts the initial setup to this build. The build in question is in fact build 7600 after personally and independently verifying the application.

However, I still hold my reservations on this. Builds have been announced before with beta and release-candidate stages, and they have turned out to be pre-beta and pre-release-candidate builds. Just because there is proof of build 7600 does not necessarily mean that this is the gold version of the upcoming operating system.

I have spoken to a number of employees working on Windows 7 and they have yet to confirm it. There could be a few more rebuilds before it is of up to scratch material. While a lot of this rests on Zheng's head, it is up to myself and others who report this news to accept responsibility for covering both aspects in this event.

Neowin has a screenshot claiming to be the same build version of Windows 7's sister-server operating system, Windows Server 2008 R2.

On the other hand, on Monday 13th there is expected to be the revealing of a "big announcement" according to former Microsoft employee, Robert Scoble. It is expected that Office web applications, which I have covered previously, could be at the forefront of this announcement. If release-to-manufacturing is to go ahead in the next 24 hours, the perfect time to share the news at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. This could be a soapbox opportunity to shower the community with a plethora of good news all in one go.

Personally, I do not believe this is the final build string of Microsoft's next operating system. When Windows Vista was released, the first part of its build string was 6000.16386. This build of Windows 7 as mentioned is 7600.16384. To ensure application compatibility, the build string needs to align the sub-string to the same as that of Vista's build string. All it would take is two rebuilds of the final build to create this, but this is why I believe we haven't quite reached the end milestone of this development cycle yet.

While 7600 is very likely to be the final build version of Windows 7, tomorrow may hold the final answer the technology communities are perched at the edges of their seats for.