Official Windows 7 ship date waffle

Bill Veghte, who gave the keynote at TechEd, mentioned the new official line on Windows 7’s ship date. Microsoft’s Press Release says:

As part of today’s news, Microsoft Corp. announced that the company is anticipating that the next version of its client operating system, Windows 7, will be available to customers in time for the holiday shopping season.

which narrows things down to, oh, sometime this year, eh? The Engineering Windows 7 blog goes into more detail about the Release to Manufacturing process, while still playing coy with the dates:

Ultimately our partners will determine when their PCs are available in market. If the feedback and telemetry on Windows 7 match our expectations then we will enter the final phases of the RTM process in about 3 months. If we are successful in that, then we tracking to our shared goal of having PCs with Windows 7 available this Holiday season.

I’m sticking to the prediction I made almost a year ago: I bet you’ll be able to buy a shrinkwrapped copy of Windows 7 on store shelves on September 1.