Mark your calendar: October 22 for Windows 7 official

Microsoft is today confirming what has been widely suspected for nearly a month: Windows 7 is now slated to ship officially on October 22, 2009.

Previous rumor had it wrong by just one day: In early May, Acer leaked that October 23, 2009 would be launch day. Despite the grievous error, I'm still going to give them credit for this one, though.

While some had been dreaming of a Windows 7 launch in time for back-to-school, the October time frame still gives manufacturers and Win7 enthusiasts plenty of opportunity to outfit machines for the holiday season and gives Microsoft a shot at redeeming 2009, which has otherwise been a lost cause from a sales standpoint.

The next issue becomes a guessing game of whether the ship date will slip. Not only has this been known to happen in the past, it's almost never been known not to happen as far back as I can remember. Vista, for example, was originally scheduled to ship in 2003. It ultimately was released in January 2007.

That's an extreme example, of course, and actually I don't think we'll see that problem here. In fact, my bet is that, for once, Microsoft will hit its deadline and get Windows 7 out the door as scheduled. The beta process for Windows 7 has gone more seamlessly than any other Windows product I can recall, with in general nothing but praise for the changes Microsoft has made since Windows Vista.

And so the next question gets handed over to you: Will you upgrade your existing PC to Windows 7? Will you buy a new computer? Or will you pass on the operating system altogether? Windows 7 is awfully stable right now, but that will improve after it's been on the market for a few months and sees its first round of patches. Is this going to be another "wait for the Service Pack" release, or are you confident enough about Windows 7 to be an early adopter?