Windows 7 to ship Oct. 22

Windows 7 will be generally available on Oct. 22 and the code will be finalized and sent out to manufacturing in late July, according to Microsoft.

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After many months of speculation, the company finally nailed a firm date Tuesday just before noon. The release to manufacturing (RTM) -- which means the code is finished and ready to be burned on to distribution media -- will come in the second half of July, according to a company spokesman. There was no firm date for RTM provided.

In addition, Microsoft confirmed there would be a Windows Upgrade Option that is similar to its Tech Guarantee program. Microsoft said details on the program and its parameters will come at a later date.

Past Tech Guarantee programs give users who purchase an earlier version of a product during a specific eligibility period the option for a low-cost or sometimes no-cost upgrade to the new version when it is released.

In January, Microsoft sent a memo to OEMs to gather feedback on establishing such a program. The memo said the eligibility period would start on July 1, 2009. It did not provide an end date for eligibility. The memo also said the upgrade to Windows 7 would be free and available only to those who purchase Vista Home Premium, Vista Business and Vita Ultimate.

Microsoft plans to make the official announcement on the Windows 7 ship date at the Computex conference in Taipei during a keynote by Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of the OEM division at Microsoft. The keynote is slated for 1:30 a.m. EST.

Microsoft did not say if Guggenheimer would provide details on the Windows Upgrade Option program.

Those details will be of interest to users who are carving out migration plans. Gartner predicts that more than half of the corporate Windows user-base will skip Vista and go to Windows 7.

Experts say users who have already deployed Vista have an easier path because Microsoft provides an upgrade option not available to XP users, and because Vista users have already solved their application compatibility issues.

A key issue for those migrating from XP will be planning when they should be off the OS. XP support runs out in 2014, and experts think that vendors will quit producing XP versions of upgrades or new software as early as 2012.

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