Official Date For Windows 7 Release – Way Early

It's been a big week for Microsoft. Seriously. They blew the world away and excited the blogosphere with Project Natal while at the same time they quietly let their new search engine Bing go live. You'd think they'd be content with hogging up most of the newswaves. But no. Microsoft still has one more trick up its sleeve, and it involves that nice little OS we've all been waiting for. That's right, on top of everything else, Microsoft announced the release date for Windows 7 - and it's way earlier than we expected.

A full three months before we originally thought it would come out, Microsoft announced they will release Windows 7 on October 22 ... just in time for the holidays ... because everyone is dying to get a nice little OS wrapped up under the tree. But really, I would.

So, we expect the Windows 7 release-to-manufacturing will begin in late July and we assume the Windows 7 Compatibility Center - so you can see if your devices are actually compatible with windows, will launch around the same time as the OS. Go download the RC and play around with it so you can know on October 22 whether or not you'll make the transition. We'll keep you updated with more dates you need to know as the transition time gets closer.

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