Acer nails Windows 7 for October release

Another piece has fallen into place for an autumn 2009 release of Windows 7. Acer, the world's joint second largest manufacturer of PCs, has reportedly given October 23 as the date when Microsoft's successor to Windows Vista will become available. Bobby Watkins, Acer's UK managing director, gave the date saying there will be …

[Anonymous Coward]

October, thank you. Now Shut up!

Why does a monopoly like Microsoft still advertise?

Expect a whole new bunch of lies from Redmond: faster, more secure, easier, simpler, etc.

Is any other OS available on a new PC?

Thanks to the economy and Vista, I may have to use my existing hardware for many more years.

Let's see: XP dead, Vista a disaster, W7 still a resource hog unsuitable for anything older than 2 years, my only alternative is Linux for my machines.

Thank you Microsoft for showing us that you can have a monopoly and still come in second.

Mine's the Penguin, cause I'm getting married soon, and feel the need for formal wear.

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Oh well...

That has just driven the price of the new Acer range up then, while they subsidise the "Vista - The Return" licenses they will have to buy in huge bulk!

Shame, such great machines for running the "financially challenged" O/S on! Time to go back and look at MSI and ASUS then!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really !

Snoooozzzzzzzzeeee.

[Brian Whittle]

I wonder

Will Acer mess around with windows 7 filling the pcs up with unneeded stuff like the did/do on vista ?

[Ian Ferguson]

Why ridiculous?

I am actually giving Microsoft a rare thumbs up for being overly cautious about release date. Seeing how all their previous release dates have slipped horrifically, it's nice for them to be understated this time.

Same with the lack of hype; they've finally realised that over-hyping a product only results in disappointment, but letting fan hype build up naturally is far more beneficial.

[Rob Welsh]

Microsoft arse....

Yep, yet again lies and more lies from your friendly neighbourhood software monopoly. I predict a future column will read 'ACER helps nail Windows 7's coffin shut due to users still insisting on XP'.

If anyone buys this crap after what Microsoft has pulled with Vista, they must be thick as shit.

[Lee]

A title is required...

If the code is 'finished' the product is 'feature complete' why wait that long...oh is it to work out the sku's and worldwide pricing for the 47 different versions

[Gary F]

Windows for free for a year

So the whole world can use Windows 7 for free for a year, acting as perhaps the widest spread beta testing in history (Google Mail excluded!), then when it expires everyone can buy it.

There are 2 advantages here for Microsoft:

1) With so many people trying it out for such a long period virtually all bugs and usability issues can come to light and get fixed. Any bad press (like we had with Vista) can be countered with "ah, but it's not the official release yet".

2) If Windows 7 is as good as we hope then most of the public beta testers won't want to part with it after using it for a year and will begrudgingly part with their cash to buy a license.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sitting on the software makes plenty of sense...

... if they're still aware of plenty of bug and driver issues from their beta testers. I imagine they're desperate to the point of paranoia of avoided the same launch debarcle as Vista and personally I applaud them not rushing it to market but actually doing some proper pre release ironing out of issues. Just because some beta versions GUI looks like its got everything the braindead reviewers could need doesn't mean the whole OS is sorted - theres more to an OS than the eye candy for IT journos to slobber over.

[Jess]

Resource hog?

It runs surprisingly well on an old Dell with a ship date 12/03/2001 with 512M RAM. Certainly better that many vista installs on current machines.

[George]

October - Great

The sooner the better. We all know that XP was good but it may have reached retirement age. We all know that Vista is a heap and should not have been released. All the testing I have done with W7 is promising.

It could be a modern XP.

[stim]

monopoly?

i'm surprised a penguin fan is indicating that MS has a monopoly! surely it's the year of the penguin isnt it? or was that last year, or maybe it was the year before that, or was it the year prior to that... i can't quite remember... :p

[Anonymous Coward]

Rob Welsh

you do have a funny perspective on things... why do so many people on here continually slate MS, it's bad to have so much hatred man, you need to chill out a bit, it's only software!

[Anonymous Coward]

A worthy successor to XP!

I’m all for piling into MS for the ‘Win ME’ style cock up they made of Vista... however it’s clear from the negative comments that you’ve not actually used Win 7 yet. Try it, you’ll like it!

Hopefully they learn the same lessons with the marketing, but I guess we won’t know that until nearer the release date... anyway it's a bank holiday so that means it's pub o'clock!

[Anonymous Coward]

@Rob Welsh

Sure it's only software. Unfortunately it's software that wastes a significant amount of mine and my colleagues time. I use linux at home by choice, at work I have no choice but to use ms windows. I estimate that about 5% of my timing is wasted getting ms windows or other ms software to do what I want. For linux the percentage of time wasted is vanishingly small.

[Tom Maddox]

Came for the hate . . .

. . . left satisfied.

[Anonymous Coward]

Y'know - it seems a shame ...

Some topics just seem to attract the same ol' entrenched views, the same ol' entrenched ...

Isn't anyone more than interested in one of the widest used products in history of mankind? (Windows if one needs to spell it out).

[Simon Langley]

Not bad

I hate Windows and Microsoft and I especially hated Vista. My experience with Vista was probably about as bad an experience as I have ever had with any operating system (judging each by the standards of the time). It was so buggy and resource hungry that it was literally unusable.

I have tried Windows 7 in a virtual machine and it was very pleasantly surprised. It runs pretty well and didn't do anything annoying at all. All it really appears to be is Vista as it ought to have been but to be fair to MS, they appear to have done their job this time.

If I can work out how to install Windows 7 to a USB drive (possible with XP but absurdly painful compared to Ubuntu or Mac OS X) I might even run it on a long term basis.