Microsoft Corp announced yesterday that its latest operating systems (OS) — Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 — would be available on Oct. 22 after the company delivers the “release to manufacturing” (RTM) code in the second half of next month.
Steven Guggenheimer, Microsoft’s vice president for the original equipment manufacturing division, told a press conference at the Computex show in Taipei that the company’s manufacturing partners would launch hardware peripherals compatible with the new operating system by Oct. 22.
“The reason for the time gap between the RTM and commercialization is for our partners to migrate their technologies and produce compatible products for the public,” Guggenheimer said.
Microsoft had initially planned to launch Windows 7 early next year to replace the unpopular Vista operating system. But the company said recently it would adjust the scheduled launch to meet the shopping season demand later this year.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since we first started to see small notebook PCs running Windows come to the market,” Guggenheimer said at a separate Windows 7 presentation yesterday.
“At the time, less than 10 percent of these devices were powered by Windows; now nearly 90 percent worldwide are Windows-based,” he said.
Guggenheimer said the move toward Windows OS from Linux on netbooks was consumer-driven and reflected the fact that netbooks had evolved into powerful PCs as opposed to the basic Web surfing tools they were designed for initially.
Microsoft, however, is facing another challenge as several PC manufacturers are adopting Google Inc’s Android OS in their products. On Tuesday, Acer Inc (宏碁) became the first PC vendor to unveil a prototype of an Android netbook. Other PC makers also have Android products in the pipeline.
Asked about the potential of Android-based or even Moblin-powered netbooks and the impact they might have on Windows 7 smartbooks or notebooks, Guggenheimer said it was too early to tell.
“It’s news versus reality. It takes time to see what really happens,” Guggenheimer said.
However, he said that Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 was an effective counterpart to Android-based smartphones, while Windows 7 is designed for fixed function devices that takes computing to a whole new level.
He said that the innovations of Windows 7 in the field of touch-screen technology would be specially suitable for all-in-one computers and tablet PCs.
Guggenheimer did not disclose the licensing fee for the new OS to Microsoft’s manufacturing partners, nor the retail price for Windows 7.
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