With the release candidate of Windows 7 now publicly available and receiving very high praise, the question on everyone’s mind is – “when will the final release of Windows 7 be available?”

Rumors had been swirling around the net that the general availability of Windows 7 would be slated for sometime this fall/winter but finally today, we’ve got some confirmation thanks to Brandon LeBlanc of the Windows Blog. In a posting entitled “Windows 7 on Track to Hit This Holiday Season”, Brandon publicly confirms that if all goes well, Windows 7 should be “done in time for the holidays.”

Of course a great deal has to happen before Microsoft can release the final shipping version of Windows 7. Check out Steven and Jon’s posting on the “Next Engineering Milestone” for Windows 7 over at the Engineering Windows 7 blog – that is of course the road to RTM. As they point out in their blog posting “RTM is not one point in time but a process.”

And finally, all of this is certainly not nailed into stone as of yet. The road to the final release is ultimately determined by the quality of the overall product. However, if the RC build is any indication, things are certainly looking up for Windows 7.

Out of curiosity, how many machines have you installed Windows 7 RC on? I have it running on four systems thus far with nary a single problem.

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