While perusing Ian Dixon’s Digital Lifestyle blog yesterday, I could not help but notice his article titled “Windows 7 General Availability Announced”. His source was on10.
From the on10 announcement:
Windows 7 will be in stores for the holidays, beginning October 22nd, 2009. In order for this to happen, the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) will be made available to Microsoft partners in the last two weeks of July.
Everything I have seen on Windows 7 blows Vista clear out of the water. What is even nicer is that once Windows 7 is cast in stone, I would expect Vail development to start heating up. Why? Because not only is Windows 7 almost done, but according to ComputerWorld and IDG.net:
Microsoft said on Wednesday that its latest server product, Windows Server 2008 R2, will be broadly available on Oct. 22, the same day as Windows 7.
This means that development of Vail, which is supposed to be based on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, should start hitting Warp speed (or so I hope).














4. June 2009 at 12:21 am
Even at “warp” speed, I don’t expect WHS release until fall 2010. Partly because I believe there will be some Live Mesh dependencies and Live Mesh is still in Beta.
In any case, I just hope they get the Media Center/XBox/Zune teams together and settle on how WHS might be best utilized.
4. June 2009 at 3:20 am
My *guess* would be that we’re definitely looking at a 2010 release for Vail, but Jim’s right, once the code is locked down and stable it should support the team really getting stuck into Vail development.
4. June 2009 at 7:28 am
And ya-all must remember, our definition of “Warp” speed is most likely vastly different then MS’s definition.
4. June 2009 at 12:39 pm
Q4 2009 through 2010 is going to be a huge release year for Microsoft.
*Windows7
*Server 08 R2
*Exchange 2010
*SharePoint 2010
*Office 2010
*Project/Visio (etc) 2010
*WHS V2 (I could see sooner than Fall of 2010)
5. June 2009 at 8:50 am
@ Kevin not to mention their zune and xbox platforms are also doing well with some big announcements for both
Not sure how well zune can compete with iPod when it isn’t available outside the US, tough there.