WinInfo Short Takes: Week of December 5, 2008 [Windows 7 availability projection]

Hmm – interesting speculation from Paul Thurrott

My predictions on the Windows 7 release date
There's been a lot of speculation about when Microsoft would ship Windows 7, its eagerly awaited follow-up to Windows Vista. So far, I've suggested that the company would ship Windows 7 far earlier than most people thought. But now I'm ready to make a number of more specific predictions myself, and add to the speculation. It's pretty widely known that Microsoft will ship a beta release (and a public one at that) of Windows 7 in January. This beta will be the only beta and it will be followed by a single release candidate build, and then the final version, all in quick succession. I expect Windows 7 to be finalized by April 2009 at the latest, and to be completed simultaneously with Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2), which is also due in April. (Windows 7 and SP2 share more code than people realize as well, by the way.) Windows 7 will be made broadly available to consumers and business customers no later than June 2009. And those, folks, are my predictions for the release of Windows 7.

WinInfo Short Takes: Week of December 5, 2008