In September 2008 I predicted that Microsoft will have to launch Windows 7 in 2009 rather than the expected 2010 release. The recent news is that I was right and that Microsoft themselves appear to agree. As a result they’ve apparently brought their launch schedule forward to 2009 in order to have Windows 7 on the shelves for Christmas of that year.

One recent report indicates that they want to have Seven ready to go final retail by around June 2009, as suggested by a presentation at WinHEC.

Thusfar they’ve stuck to their guns and remained determined on a release-date somewhere in early 2010, or "When it’s ready".

Now that the suggestion is out that the actual release to manufacturing will be 2009, it indicates that either the development team are happy with progress and/or ahead of schedule; or that Seven will be another rush-job that’s substandard, underdeveloped, doesn’t work properly, and requires a number of service packs to make it stable: Does that remind you of anything? Vista perhaps? To be honest, though, I suspect the former; that the developers are on cloud nine and the development program is rockin’.

The pre-beta as well as the public beta1 release of Seven has already flooded the p2p networks, and people so far appear to like what they see. Maybe Microsoft are bouncing back, having learned huge lessons from their Vista fiasco?

Remember the flak that was encountered by the softies when they launched Vista in January 2007? They missed Christmas, they missed the moment when the money flowed; in fact they missed the boat altogether. This annoyed the PC vendors, manufacturers, and the like. Also there was the issue that, due to M$ keeping quiet about the hardware requirements of Vista, there were very few compatible drivers and virtually no recently-developed compatible hardware.

In this author’s opinion the only way for Microsoft, provided that they play their cards right this time, is up.

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Fire Your Computer Technician!

A computer technician spills the beans and makes available the knowledge he has charged clients hundreds in service fees for.