Microsoft's Windows 7 gets released to manufacturing
By Darren Murph 
posted Jul 22nd 2009 4:55PM
posted Jul 22nd 2009 4:55PM
"The RTM code will be delivered to our partners within the next few days who will then start preparing to deliver some amazing new products timed to hit at General Availability (GA) of Windows 7 on October 22nd. As always, current Windows Volume License customers, MSDN subscribers and TechNet subscribers will get first customer access, getting Windows 7 on August 6 (MSDN/TechNet) and August 7 (VL), and Windows Server 2008 R2 the second half of August."So, there you have it -- now, are you prepared to wait until early August to get your download on? Nah, we thought not. The full announcement is posted after the break.
Update: Looks like some Microsoft employees were so excited by the RTM sign-off that they made a celebratory video. See it for yourself just after the break!
Title: Windows 7 Has Been Released to Manufacturing
Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division, has just announced on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog that Windows 7 has reached the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone.
As I mentioned previously, RTM officially happens only after sign-off occurs. What happens is a build gets designated as a RTM contender after going through significant testing and meeting our quality bar for RTM. Then, it goes though all the validation checks required for RTM including having all languages of that build completed. If all the validation checks have passed – sign-off for RTM can occur. Today after all the validation checks were met, we signed off and declared build 7600.16385 as RTM.
Also happening very shortly, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will get on stage for his keynote address to the Microsoft field community at MGX in Atlanta. MGX is an internal Microsoft event held every year. This is where we bring in our folks in the field from around the world and talk about selling Microsoft's latest products. We're a global company and this event is super important to us. As you can imagine, Windows 7 is a hot topic at this year's MGX and we're anxious to hear what Steve has to say, and I will update that here.
Not only is RTM an important milestone for us – it's also an important milestone for our partners. Today's release is the result of hard work and collaboration with our partners in the industry to make Windows 7 a success. We delivered Windows 7 with predictable feature set on a predictable timetable that allowed OEMs to focus on value and differentiation for their customers.
Our customers told us what they want (and expect) and we defined those specific experiences and then built features to support them (like HomeGroup and the Windows Taskbar enhancements). Our customers also told us that "fundamentals" on both the hardware and software side was extremely important. Windows 7 today runs great on the broadest array of hardware types ranging from netbooks to the high end gaming machines. We worked closely with OEMs so that their PCs ignite features in Windows 7 to excite their customers.
Of course, today's release is also the result of the amazing amount of feedback we received from the millions of people who tested Windows 7 – from Beta to RC. We actually had over 10 million people opt-in to the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). That's a lot of people opting in to help us make Windows 7 a solid release. Through CEIP, our engineers were guided by customer feedback all the way to RTM. We also have had a great group of beta testers who have dedicated a great deal of their time to testing Windows 7 too. A special thank you goes out to all the people who helped test Windows 7.
I'd also like to give a shout-out to my friends over on the Windows Server Team. Today they are also announcing that Windows Server 2008 R2 has RTM'd. Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 together can help businesses cut costs and increase productivity. Click here to read their blog post on Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM.
The RTM code will be delivered to our partners within the next few days who will then start preparing to deliver some amazing new products timed to hit at General Availability (GA) of Windows 7. And going forward, I expect to be showcasing MANY of these new products here on The Windows Blog.
We continue to be overwhelmed at the community's response to Windows 7 and it has been an extremely rewarding experience to witness. We hope the enthusiasm will continue to grow even more as our partners build amazing experiences with their products and Windows 7.
Can someone buy me a computer with Windows 7 on it? pandas arent allowed in stores.
you must be a saaaaaad panda.
sorry my dear monochromatic freind. i tried to downrank the spam post that was above you, but that post got pulled and you got downranked instead. i will change my desktop backgound to a panda for the rest of the day. my PC fund is in need of a bailout, otherwise i would get you a computer instead.
No, but I you can get a copy of Chindows easily.
I feel so loved today :). Today is a happy day, my bank paid me £30 for no reason, Kali4 is putting a picture of a panda on their desktop.
Everyone, be happy :)
i thought pandas are from china, wth are you doing w/ pounds..? i swear the next time i find another euro panda i would flatten it and make it my desktop background for real. meanwhile i'm just going around killing time...
@Kali4
I up ranked ya!
;o)
August 6th is it for me then. Will be wondering how well it runs runs VMWare Workstation pitted against my ubuntu 64bit running VMWare Workstation.
Will be interesting.
wow! that was strangely cute
Awesome. Cant wait till my job gets their corp version :)
Mc Donalds uses Windows?
darn, burger flippin has gotten complex!
windows rocks
There's this thing I like doing to windows with rocks...
Oh, but Windows with rocks are stupid because you can't see through em, the rocks block the view ;P
Windows 7: The return of Windows and the rebirth of Microsoft?
Correction:
Windows 7: The return of Windows and the rebirth of Microsoft
Not with Vista Pro I'm afraid! :)
I wasn't aware windows had gone somewhere or that Microsoft had died... Man, no one tells me anything anymore :-(.
considering Microsofts massive market share it's hard to say they've gone anywhere. They are far and away the dominant computer operating system. Most of the world isn't skinny pant wearing mac hipsters that want to wait in line for a phone and measure their own worth by how much they brag about their brand of laptop or cellphone.
@ddub
Ok, I like skinny jeans and I think Apple makes garbage products. Quit grouping my pants with those airheads.
@ Dez
At least he's not groping your pants
I'm still running XP Pro on all of my computers. I even paid Lenovo $20 to install XP instead of Vista on my notebook.
What are the main improvements in Win 7 that would warrant an upgrade? I guess I'm really on the fence about upgrading when all my programs run nice and fast in XP, and I have never had any security issues with the OS.
Faster overall performance (boot, programs, searching), vastly improved security, tons of UI enhancements, much improved media center . . .
Meh, just read the full list
http://geekpi.com/?p=25
Ya know I have asked many times about why I should upgrade to Vista Pro and all I got was lame answers. Don't expect this to change. :)
Soon there will be ending support and update for WinXP.
Win7 is Vista with some nice optimizations. Basically my service-tweaked Vista build runs as snappy as a stock Win 7 build.
I've been using Vista since June 07, and I hate using XP now. Feels old and antiquated. I've been using Win 7 on my work laptop since the RC hit, and it's a nice upgrade over VIsta, but nothing revolutionary. It's really what Vista probably was meant to be.
All the 'Vista sucks, Win 7 rules" people are generally idiots who never gave Vista a chance. There, I said it. The differences are minimal. New taskbar and stuff is nice, but Win 7 vs Vista feels like Win 98 vs 95. The same thing, just more stable with some nice tweaks. Not, "OMG THIS IS THE CHOSEN OS".
I'm personally more stoked for Server 08 R2...have a few servers that need rebilt and have been waiting on it...August 6th can't come soon enough.
Bluberry: Have you used the Beta or RC of WINDOWS 7? Because if you had, you would know first hand and wouldn't need to make pointless comments.
Not to mention you would want to be first in line to buy it.
@Kamokazi: But, and here's the key, what happens when you full optimize your copy of 7? Besides, Homegroups alone are a great selling point for 7.
@ Blueberry
Sounds like the result I found when I looked into upgrading to Leopard. Or what I'm seeing so far with Snow Leopard.
@GeekPI: You say Win 7 will have faster booting, performance, etc.. but the link you posted mainly compares the performance Win7 to Vista.
The main reason to upgrade onto Win 7 Is ignorance ....
if you're still not even aware of what improvements the OS is bringing, please go on and stick to XP ...
:)
Honestly, if you're running XP on your current stuff, and are happy with that, stick with it. However, when buying new stuff, you'll find that there's a lot of stuff XP wont support, so you'll have to upgrade eventually, and Win7 looks a hellovalot better than Vista, so I'm quite looking forward to it, as a person that's still running XP and refusing to get Vista :)
Optimization for multi-core processors is a pretty good reason, unless you're still running a Pentium 2 (of course there's nothing wrong with win95).
I've been using Windows 7 at work for a few weeks now. I had been running Vista Ultimate but got fed up with the random issues I had with switchable graphics. What a hot mess. Windows 7 detected all of the hardware in my Lenovo ThinkPad T500. All of it. Take a minute to think about that. It detected the biometrics, TPM, AHCI and ACPI modules... HDMI card reader... everything. It was like Installing OS X on a Mac. I didn't have to do any work.
I don't know if it's fair to call it Vista Pro. There are several improvements to overall layout and workflow in this operating that leave me wanting more from my Macbook Pro running Leopard. The new windowing system is a pleasure to use when multitasking. Everything runs faster. The new taskbar is jarring at first, but once you get used to it, it increases your productivity and keeps things nice and neat. My only advice is for you to try it for two weeks, using it extensively before passing it off as a worthless upgrade. For one thing, it's a lot more stable than Windows Vista running on the same machine. I haven't had it crash once.
It's little things like file sorting, where you can sort by a specific criteria, then hit the drop down arrow on the associated column to filter only by the content you want to see with a simple checkbox. Using it side by side with my Leopard install, Spotlight has some catching up to do. Did I mention it's very fast? Search beats the pants off Spotlight in Leopard right now. Maybe it's too soon to compare. Maybe a comparison between Windows 7 and Snow Leopard would be more balanced.
So can you change the window borders yet and make the start menu "classic" or do they still force you to have all that garbage eye candy and tool bars you can't remove or compact? (I'm talking being able to compress the bars at the top of the window to one bar, file menu, location and all...in one bar.) Also, did they finally add the lines back to the tree view and allow the removal of the "locations" folders?
This:
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/2333/compactview.png
...is what I need from Windows 7 and I doubt it can provide.
@Andir3.0: Either evolvoe with the OS or get left behind in the past, your choice
Boo Hoo Andir. What resolution you running to complain about 50 pixels? 800x600? 640x480?
50 pixels is 50 pixels. It's 50 more pixels than you have with Windows 7. It's more lines of code, it's more document space, more windows you can have open before the screen gets cluttered, more usable space that the OS doesn't interfere with...
It's also a feature that was available and removed... so in essence, I'm getting less features for more cost.
And for the record, I run 1920x1600 of glorious Windows minimality (when I'm at work... since I use Linux at home and I don't even need a bar at the top.)
I mean seriously, we have all these widescreen monitors... why not use the width to benefit fitting more on your screen. I think you too might be giving Microsoft too much lenience. As it is in Win7, you will have a practically empty toolbar at the top of the window that could be better used for something productive.
@Kamokazi:
Unfortunately, it looks like 2008 R2 won't be made available until the "second half of August." (last sentence in the first block quote of the post).
I'm really excited to get Win7 on the 6th, but I was hoping 2008 R2 (and Hyper-V 2008 R2) would be released the same day as well. I have a few server builds waiting for R2 also :)
Or for Pete's sake,
50 pixels on 1600? That's 3.125%. There really have to be bigger fish to fry.
I just changed my Windows 7 to the Windows Classic theme. If you are complaining about that tiny amount of screen space being taken up on the top menu bar....you have wayy too much time on your hands. Put your energies wasted worrying about those pixels towards your work instead.
You've made it even more clear how important those 50 pixels are! You get 3% more screen real estate just by not having that bar. That's like someone handing you $6000 for buying a $200,000 home. Think of what you could do to that house for $6K.
Heck, I didn't even touch on the idea that you might have multiple windows open... If you were transferring files form one window to another or you were trying to compare directories... Now instead of 50 pixels, you are losing 100, 150, maybe even 200 of those pixels depending on how much you are multitasking.
Have you ever dealt with code or massive amounts of files? Have you ever tried to work with multiple screens of log files? Every little bit helps.
I just don't get why someone would vehemently defend the idea of fixed tool bars in any system, especially when the previous system had customizable windows. It's like defending Ford for removing adjustable seats.
@Andir3.0 For someone complaining about 50px, you sure have that Folders list pane spread out real wide.
That space is there for a reason. It's not arbitrary - it's for visual organization.
This is what 7 looks like in classic view, i just took this screenie to show you really how bad it looks, and how terrible it is for multitasking. (Switches back to the warm sweet comfort of Areo.)
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a260/XirXes/ughh.png
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a260/XirXes/ughh.png
"For someone complaining about 50px, you sure have that Folders list pane spread out real wide."
1. Wide screen monitors are wider than they are tall. You should probably check into that. Horizontal space is plentiful.
2. When you are digging 4, 5, even 10 folders in... that extra width comes in handy so you don't have to scroll left and right to see the entire tree.
That looks like Windows ME. ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
"This is what 7 looks like in classic view, i just took this screenie to show you really how bad it looks, and how terrible it is for multitasking."
I know how bad it looks. It's nothing like the classic at all. All that wasted space, the horrible theme... that's what I'm complaining about. You've even included the "Organize" bar as well that can't be removed. Thanks for pointing that out. Oh, and the status bar at the bottom of the window...that used to be a nice small simple line of text. Now look a the thing! Look at the needless extra space in the left pane between categories where the folder list is... note that it's missing lines to help visually identify children folders. It's not as evident on your screen shot, but if you get about 4-5 folders down then it gets to be a task to track parent folders and nesting... And boy, look at that task bar... You're screen shot is proof of what I've been saying. Not productive at all and switching to Aero doesn't fix that. If anything, it makes it worse because it adds a candy coating to the inefficiency of it.
I hate to break it to you Andir, but Windows has looked like this in classic view for the last 10 years. The things you are complaining about are minor differences. Are you just trying to find the stupidest little things to complain about?
I agree, if you are programming and writing code, screen space is precious - but when you are talking about the amount of screen space you are talking about - it really just comes down to you being extremely picky. Now you're complaining about the taskbar? Well the taskbar has always been there, and having icons on it is not taking up any more of your precious screen space. What point are you trying to make? I like how Windows now looks and feels cool and slick. I get the feeling that if you designed the GUI it would look cold, empty, and heartless.
XP refined the classic view to the point where it was customizable (and dare I say perfect?)
And if I were design a UI it would have some eye candy, but it wouldn't be the main focus of the window. Apple did eye candy well, so did the *box themes for Linux. There's a point where you can have too much. Microsoft hit that pretty hard.
.......nice.
ha ha the screen is of Windows 7 but the browser is Apple's Safare... hmm...
@sk8ordie, it is still Engadget they do their best.
Wrong.
Firefox - still not IE, but hey that might be the European version of windows 7 there.
Awesome. Can't wait to get the real copy myself. Server stuff sounds interesting also.
nice, bring on the multi-touch devices!
:)
nice
I'm waiting to buy my new laptop with it preinstalled. This cant come soon enough!
Then be happy with it. No one is forcing you to upgrade. However, if you plan on getting new systems - definitely get Windows 7
Windows 7: Good.
IE8: Good.
Zune HD: GOOD.
Bing: Good.
Windows Mobile 6.5/7.0: Looks good, at least.
Go Microsoft.
For sure, Microsoft is definitely bringing their A game right now
If I could make one amendment to your list, I'd say:
Vista: good
Win 7: GOOD.
That is all.
Windows 7: Good.
Security Essentials: Actually a really good low resource suite. Perfect for those who want some sort of protection that will likely never get a virus but want something that will not slow the computer down.
Windows Home Server: With the latest power pack its actually a really good compliment to media center. Looking forward WHS2.0
IE8: imo not terribly good.... still losing marketshare.
Zune HD: Looking much better.
Bing: Actually kinda surprised with bing.... didnt think it would be as successful as it has been already.
Windows Mobile 6.5/7.0: 6.5 will not be very good.... cant pass judgement on wm7 yet but it better be spectacular.
Xbox360: Doing much better than I expected esp compared to the ps3.
Natal: Looks like it could be the next revolution in gaming.
Overall I would say microsoft is doing a pretty outstanding job right now.
Windows 7 i would say is the best OS from MS yet,
IE8 still sucks, there's no way around that
Zune HD looks really good
Bing is really good.
WinMo 6.5 is a bit meh, but 7.0 is looking good
but you forgot the xbox which is prob their best product
Everything is good except for users. Is that good too?
Adding IE8 to your list lost you all credibility. It's just as garbage as it's ever been - and this is coming from someone that has to use it all day at work.
OSX : AWESOME
Safari 4.0: AWESOME
iPod Touch: AMAZING
Google: RULEZ
Mobile OSX: STUNNING
Go Apple......
( sry I just HAD to do it :P)
I was going to let you have your fun until you said "Mobile OSX: Stunning."
I find my iPhone far less than stunning. I find my iPhone to be very slow, very buggy, and to require many more steps to do simple tasks than most other phones.
Meh ... still
Mobile OSX > WinMo ....
Not only from the user aspect, but also from the view of a Developer.. .... .. ... .. .. ... this platform is just AWESOME and totally stunning, not even android can beat it... BAM!!!
IE8 isn't bad, it's just not great.
IE8 is awful. I have it on an XP box (dual core) and a Win 7 RC box (quad core) and on both it hangs on every other launch. Takes a-boot 3-4 minutes to launch sometimes. Firefox/Safari run rings around it.
"Mobile OSX > WinMo ....
Not only from the user aspect, but also from the view of a Developer.. .... .. ... .. .. ... this platform is just AWESOME and totally stunning, not even android can beat it... BAM!!!"
Uh, you do realize C++ is used for both, right? And that the libraries are dead simple on WinMo? Then again, given your fascination with exclamations, my guess is you're about 3 years old(mentally if not physiologically) so you can't possibly understand anything about any of this.
Good List except IE8. I use a Combo of Opera and IE8. For soem reason, I don't if it's because I'm using Vista 64 bit but IE8 will open multiple instances of itself which then makes it either lock up or give me an error message. I have to find out what the correct combo is to get it to work right.
You also should've added Vista 64 bit as good. Besides the IE8 problem I'm having, which could be the browser, I haven't had any issues on my 6715b Laptop. 2 years strong without a Blue Screen or anything else serious. It's a Good OS. 64 Bit boots fast, Shutsdown fast and works great.
when did Google become apart of apple?
@Finnschi
From the view point of a 21 year veteran professional developer that has worked with languages such as ADA, Pascal, FORTRAN, Java, C, C++, VB, VB.NET, C#, web scripting languages, and many more; developed on platforms from mainframes with punchcards to Windows 7; used development tools such as ed, MS-DOS edit, Eclipse, Visual Studio, and many more; and has two apps in the AppStore; I think I am qualified to say Objective-C, XCode and the APIs are the most horrible abominations ever foisted upon man.
Windows 7: Good.
IE8: SH*T
Zune HD: Sad
Bing: Okay
Windows Mobile 6.5/7.0: To early to tell.
Snow Leopard vs Seven ... I'm not sure which would win. In my personal opinion (don't low rank me for my opinion!) windows looks kind of... undesirable.
What I mean to say is, I don't really see anything really compelling that would make me switch from OS X to Windows.
Who are these asses talking about IE8?
"Takes a-boot 3-4 minutes to launch sometimes."
Get your computer fixed, man. Jesus. I think IE8 has never taken longer than 3 seconds to launch on any machine I own, and I own some seriously old shit.
IE8 works great guys. Have you seriously used it? Or did you use it and try to look for anything remotely nitpicky so you can stick with a browser you love more?
I haven't had an issue with it. There were one or two crashes, but luckily IE kept the crash within the tab, and not the whole browser (I've had more crashes with Safari). It's search box is wonderful, and I love the Accelerators and WebSlices.
Sure, it may not have many great add-ons (though there are a good number of them that are), but it's not that awful of a browser. I just hope the IE team sticks to making it more standards compliance.
time to start buggin DELL to send me the upgrade licenses
Did I miss those articles in the picture about ATT and GH?
Stand in front of the bus....
Sure, but only cause you told me to.
Go away.
Yeah, good luck convincing me to upgrade from Win XP...
Can't get any faster than this, no matter how much they'd want me to think. Hell, my system even boots up in 20 seconds or less, whereas on Vista that took a whole minute, even on a $2,000 machine.
Hmm my $700 machine boots into 7 in about 5-10 seconds... Granted I have a SSD in it but nevertheless...
I'm going to have to second Mark on that, Windows 7 definitely boots up faster, not to mention shuts down faster and looks a hell of a lot better.
Mark's right. My non-SSD hardisk is about 20 seconds.
soooooooo....... You're willing to not learn how to tweak a new OS because you are happy with your 4GB RAM limit? I haven't found anything I can do in XP that I can't do in 7. Course I have found a few things I can do in 7 that I can't in XP. Oh, by the way; 7 (no SSD) boots in ~30 seconds on my single core AMD without any OS tweaks.
my 6 year old P4 boots into windows 7 in 35 seconds...50 seconds to fully working desktop (with 6 or so start up programs)
I'll bet you win2K is faster than your XP install. And DOS 6.22 would SCREAM on that machine. Maybe you should go back to DOS? Did you know that you can still watch current TV shows on 13" black and white TVs? Why bother upgrading to HD? A 1976 AMC Pacer gets you to your destination just the same as a brand new Ferrari. I bet if someone offered you a Ferrari you'd say no thanks, my Pacer gets me to work just the same.
And if you spent $2000 building a machine, short of it being an 8 core machine with 32gb of ram, you got ripped off AND XP won't take advantage of 8 cores.
guys just leave bruce lee along okay? :) i like bruce lee for realz.
I'm hoping the retail version fixes the problem that RC caused for me. I had zero problems with beta build 7000, but when i "upgraded" to RC, i randomly get a bluescreen (afd.sys) when using firefox/ie/opera. Never when playing a game, just when on the interwebs.
either way, i'm still going to get win7.
Must have been something to do with the upgrade process or a driver conflict perhaps? I ran FF and Opera just fine on Win7 without that issue.
afd crashes are usually network card drivers or a bad network card.
the file is related to the winsock, so if your getting bad network data it can cause the crash.
in other words, it's not the OS's fault
weird that it would start only after you installed the RC though....probably coincidence
Go away! Those are scams.
I don't really read engadget comments that often and this is the second time I've seen your spam. Trust me, posting that is a waste of time.
I'm getting OSX Snow Leopard.