Microsoft officials are finally admitting what many company watchers, customers and partners have known for a while: Windows 7 is going to ship in 2009. Specifically, Windows 7 is going to be generally available in time for holiday 2009. Windows Server 2008 R2 will ship “in the same timeframe,” officials are conceding.Windows client officials are still declining to provide a release-to-manufacturing (RTM) target for Windows 7.Acer would be able to ship new PCs preloaded with Windows 7 by late October 2009 — Windows 7 looks like it could RTM by late August or early September.
Windows 7 PCs would need to be available by August/September for that. It’s hard to tell if the Windows client team is still playing its “worst-case” ship date game so that they can underpromise and overdeliver Windows 7 earlier than most are expecting.
More at; http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2727
& http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/05/11/windows-7-on-track-to-hit-this-holiday-season.aspx & http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/11/OurNextEngineeringMilestone2.aspx