Microsoft has confirmed that it will ship Windows 7 in time for the holiday shopping season. Previously, the company had not indicated exactly when the product would ship. The Windows 7 Release Candidate has been made available to the public and can be downloaded free of charge with a license that doesn’t expire until August 2010. The Windows 7 Release Candidate offers a number of improvements over earlier beta versions of the OS. Windows 7 promises increases in computer speed and performance.

Windows Server, Office 2010 Get Upgrades

In addition, new versions of Windows Server and SQL Server will ship when Windows 7 is formally released and Microsoft will release a preview version of Office 2010 in July at Microsoft’s technology preview. One of the interesting features of the new Office 2010 will be browser-based versions of the Office applications. This approach will allow Microsoft to make Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote available to non-PC users on the Linux and Mac platforms, as well for the iPhone.

For the average user, the relatively tandem introduction of Windows 7 and Office 2010 will mean mostly good things. This will also be the first time that Windows Server will be delivered to market at the same time the OS is upgraded. While the arrival of Windows Server is mostly a business-oriented score, the average user could see some big changes to the PC at work in late fall 2009.

Many techs still say they’re not prepared to switch over to Windows 7 when it’s released. Many businesses opted not to upgrade to Vista, and still use Windows XP as their primary operating system. From surveys taken prior to the release of the Windows 7 Release Candidate, as many as 80 percent of IT professionals said they would not upgrade to Windows 7 immediately after its release.

With the pairing of the Windows 7 OS and the Windows Server releases, however, there may be more incentive to rethink a corporate rollout strategy. Feedback from users on the Windows 7 Release Candidate has generally been positive. After the lukewarm reception Windows Vista received, however, Microsoft isn’t taking any chances with Windows 7.
Downgrade options to Windows Vista and Windows XP will still be available for some time following the release of Windows 7. Sometime in Spring 2010, Microsoft will eliminate the downgrade option to Windows XP for desktop computers. Currently, the downgrade option from Vista to XP is only available for desktop models.

Photo Credit: Image Courtesy of Microsoft