Microsoft Windows 7 to hit market in October

[tjw61]

Microsoft Windows 7 to hit market in October
Posted on - Tue Jun 2, 2009 2:53PM EDT

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday its new Windows 7 operating system will be generally available on October 22, well ahead of its original schedule and in time for the holiday shopping season.

The new operating system, which will replace the unpopular Vista, was originally planned for roll-out at the beginning of next year, but Microsoft confirmed last month that it would hit the market in time for the year's busiest buying period.

The arrival of the new system is a big event for the computing world, as more than 90 percent of the world's PC's run on Windows, and strategically important for Microsoft, which gets more than half of its profit from its operating system unit.

The latest release is crucial to win back public confidence after the disappointing launch of Vista in 2007. Vista was incompatible with some low-power machines and perceived by many to be too complicated.

The world's largest software company also faces new threats to its dominance in operating systems, especially in the fast-growing "netbook" market for small, portable PCs ideal for surfing the Internet and sending e-mail.

Earlier on Tuesday, netbook pioneer Acer Inc said it plans to sell small PCs that run on Google Inc's new Android operating system, making it the first manufacturer to do so.

Microsoft said it will send Windows 7 code to PC makers to load onto new machines -- known in the industry as "release to manufacturing" -- around the end of July.

By October 22, people will be able to buy new computers with Windows 7 installed, or pick up the software off the shelf to install on their old computers.

Microsoft confirmed that it will run a program whereby people who buy PCs with certain versions of Vista before October 22 can get a free upgrade to Windows 7, but it has not yet released details.

Microsoft shares were up 7 cents at $21.47 on Nasdaq.

[WallyW]

I am a bit of a tech geek myself. I am excited to see this come out. I signed up for the beta testing as soon as I could. I've been using both legally released versions. I've heard about numerous beta's floating around the warez scene but I chose not to fool with those. I like some of what they have done.

It is quite different from the XP I am so used to. I still do not like there virtual folder thing, or whatever it is being called. The folders in the start menu don't link to just one location. You can have it set to pull information from various folders and show up in the same view as if it were in the same folder. Confusing? Yes! A bit annoying also.

Well I don't want to rant too much but I'll just say that overall I think it's a vast improvement over what is available now.

[computer2slow]

The virtual folders makes it harder at least to me to find things. It will say it's a folder/link but won't let you access it. I keep hearing how the search is better in win7 but I like the classic in XP way better. CDburnerXp doesn't see my DVD drive and explorer crashes almost everytime I try to goto manage to see logs etc. And it's only recognizes my mp3 player about 1 out of 20 tries.

[revae]

^ i agree with u, i still like XP's ui...
win7 sometimes kinda confusing (like vista), or its because i already too familiar with xp?

but yes, it's beautiful...

[ozzybuds]

I've been using the 64 bit RC of Windows 7 for quite a while. I've been really, really impressed with it. Have had no stability issues with it all. No problems with drivers and the performance is noticably improved from Vista (although I only had the 32 bit version of that installed.)

[gtmofflin]

It will be coming in three flavours...

Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate.

[Dtrtwing]

Everyone seems to be really impressed with Windows 7. I can't say the same. Wish i could but from what i see its not really any better then Vista. To me this is going to be a rehash of what Microsoft did some years ago with Windows ME.
Its basically a way to get people to pay twice. Instead of fixing Vista they skip that and charge people to buy Windows 7. I just dont see how fair that is.

[gtmofflin]

Everyone seems to be really impressed with Windows 7. I can't say the same. Wish i could but from what i see its not really any better then Vista. To me this is going to be a rehash of what Microsoft did some years ago with Windows ME.
Its basically a way to get people to pay twice. Instead of fixing Vista they skip that and charge people to buy Windows 7. I just dont see how fair that is.

Sorry, I have to totally disagree. I currently run W7 RC, used to run Vista Ultimate but downgraded back to XP Pro MCE.



Performance:
Boot times in Windows 7 have been tweaked considerably. Vista takes an incredibly long time to boot up, whilst Windows 7 cuts that time in half! That's barebones, without any extra services loading at start up.

File copying is faster on Windows 7 than Windows Vista. Vista is terribly slow at copying files less than 1gig, strangely it fairs better than XP at files over 1gig in size but still fails to beat Windows 7 in both tests.

Opening documents eg excel spreadsheets, fare the same results. Vista and XP battle it out, Windows 7 just runs over the top of them.

Networking, I love the changes to networking in W7. I used to have some woe with Vista and with XP with my wireless network, but W7 just made everything seamless. Anyway, Windows 7 trumps Vista for networking too. As it does for Security, Gaming, Mobility..And so on.

Just do some research. Google: 'windows 7 versus vista?' and read what everyone else is doing.

I quoted information from the magazine APC July 2009, but you can read the full article at Techradar.

[hey1]

thank you for this great news.
I hope it is better than vista.

[gtmofflin]

thank you for this great news.
I hope it is better than vista.

You can't even keep Vista and Windows 7 in the same sentence when talking about quality :p