Microsoft had already confirmed that Windows 7 would be available for consumers ahead of the 2009 holiday season. Now the Redmond company has an actual general availability date. Windows 7 will hit the shelves on October 22, 2009. October was already indicated as the month of Windows 7 GA (general availability), and now the software giant comes only to confirm information leaked into the wild. GA means that, come October 22, customers will be able to purchase Windows 7 from retail outlets or pre-installed on new OEM computers. “Our milestone-to-milestone approach for Windows 7 is built on a great deal of feedback from customers and testers. This has been pivotal to the development of Windows 7. I [wrote] a few weeks ago that it’s looking like we’ll have Windows 7 ready in time for the holidays. Since then we’ve made enough progress to feel really good about announcing that Windows 7 will be in stores beginning October 22nd,” revealed Brandon LeBlanc, Windows communications manager on the Windows Client Communications Team. On the path to general availability, Windows 7 has an additional milestone to go through: RTM. The Redmond company does not regard RTM as an actual step, but rather as a process. As Windows 7 will be released to manufacturing, original equipment manufacturers will start getting the code for pre-installation on new computers, and the boxed copies of Windows 7 will begin being produced. RTM is to come as early as next month. source: news.softpedia.com