That"s right, October 22 is creeping up fast, and Windows 7 is getting very close to being available to the general public, even though most of us probably have our hands on a copy by now. According to Engadget, these Windows 7 retail boxes arrived in a Chicago Electronics shop today.
If you recall, back in May of this year the box art was leaked and then later confirmed by various postings across Microsoft retail sites.
Many of us have also gotten their hands on Windows 7 Party Packs for the Windows 7 House Parties that Microsoft is pushing to get consumers to adopt Windows 7 even quicker.
Windows 7 is Microsoft"s latest and most highly anticipated Operating System, which has been the center of attention since Microsoft started sharing about it around this time last year at PDC. In January, Microsoft had an official public beta of build "7000" which had at least 2.5 million users attempt to download it in the first 24 hours of the beta being open, which crippled their download servers and brought TechNet to a crawl.
In May, Microsoft made the Release Candidate, Build "7100", available to the public through until August 20, stating that this version of Windows 7 would be free for "six months" if you continued to use the RC until it expired. This build had over 100 fixes and tweaks that Microsoft had provided thanks to testers feedback.
On August 6, Microsoft made available the RTM code, Build "7600", of Windows 7 to Technet/MSDN users, and general availabilty on October 22 marks the final phase of Windows 7"s release.
Neowin will be reporting live from the upcoming Windows 7 launch in NYC with Steve Ballmer on October 22. Stay tuned.