A post on the Windows Team Blog states that Windows 7 will be on store shelves October 22nd. Additionally, the “release to manufacturing” or RTM date will be sometime in late July. RTM is basically a term for the final production version of a software project, or the version that will be pressed onto discs. Basically, Microsoft partner companies will have access to the production version of Windows 7 about 3 months before it is released to the general public. Companies that will receive the RTM code are usually PC manufacturers, software developers, and large corporations.

It is interesting to note that while this blog post seems to come from an “official” Microsoft source, there has not been a truly offical press release from Microsoft yet on this. Why, I’m not sure. Perhaps they will hold a press conference soon and just wanted to float the news via the blogosphere first.

So assuming this info is true, Microsoft will have Windows 7 available in time for the holiday shopping season, which should make PC manufacturers happy since they should see a surge in sales. Microsoft was not able to make this happen with Vista, which in hindsight, was probably for the best.

So we will now see what will come of Windows 7. Will it be simply “a stripped down version of Vista” that brings nothing new to the OS table, or will it be well-received and bring some credibility back to Microsoft. It should be an interesting last quarter of 2009.