Windows 7 to launch by holiday 2009?

Posted Nov 6th 2008 9:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Hardware

Microsoft launched its Windows Vista PC operating system in January 2007 for consumers but their latest PC OS has been slammed with tons of bugs and compatibilty issues. Nearly all PC games still run under Windows XP with only a few currently supporting Vista natively via the DirectX10 graphics API.

Now it appears that the next major Windows OS release could be on store shelves and inside new PCs inside of a year. News.com is reporting that during a presentation at Microsoft's annual WinHEC conference slides were shown that seem to indicate Microsoft is aiming to ship the OS, currently known only as Windows 7, in mid-2009 in time for PC makers to place them in their rigs for the 2009 holiday season.

Officially Microsoft has yet to set a release date for Windows 7, perhaps because it got burned when it had to delay Windows Vista from a planned fall 2006 commerical release to January 2007. Microsoft has yet to say what PC game specific features Windows 7 will have but the company has already revealed plans for DirectX11, the next version of its game graphics API. It's likely to be included in the Windows 7 launch (although it's already been announced that DirectX11 will be compatible with Vista).

Tags: directx10, directx11, microsoft, windows-7, windows-vista, winhec-2008

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Well, this is a problem. I was planning on buying a new PC mid-2009, but if Windows 7 is *really* coming out late 2009, I may have to wait until then. But I really don't want to wait and then have it delayed...Posted at 10:08PM on Nov 6th 2008 by Josh (VICTOLY! WELL DONE AMERICA)

Thanks for sticking to gaming news. Gaming is my hobby and an escape. I don't like coming to a site and having someone's agenda shoved down my throat no matter what they believe. I would rather hear more about Precursors or some other lesser known game.Posted at 3:00AM on Nov 7th 2008 by Jason W.

Cant wait for windows7

vista is killing me!

Greetz Pete - http://www.torrentin.comPosted at 5:14AM on Nov 7th 2008 by pete

AAAARH come on, they havent even fixed Vista now im supposed to waste all of my money on another useless system. go to hell!Posted at 9:33AM on Nov 7th 2008 by Teodor

Personally I'm still perfectly happy with Vista though 7 looks to have a few neat features. As the usual rule of thumb I'll wait at least 6 months before picking it up and then move Vista to my secondary machine.

...bysmittyPosted at 12:54PM on Nov 7th 2008 by bysmitty

@ Josh: Don't hold off on your upgrading for Windows 7. As with any OS it will be unfinished and frustrating at launch. I would build the machine as planned and either put on a spare copy of XP if you have one or buy a copy of Vista Home Premium. You can always upgrade to 7 later.

@ Jason: Yeah it isn't directly gaming related but this is a PC gaming site and a new OS will have a pretty dramatic impact on how we game and on what. A few off-topic but still relevant posts here and there won't degrade the quality of the site.

...bysmittyPosted at 1:00PM on Nov 7th 2008 by bysmitty

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I was just pointing out that I like how BigDownload keeps their site non-political. I enjoyed this article specifically but I woke up yesterday and all these other websites were promoting some type of agenda and it opened my eyes.Posted at 3:34PM on Nov 7th 2008 by Jason W.

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Posted at 7:30PM on Dec 27th 2008 by vikas gupta