In a post today Ed Bott asked the simple question When will Windows 7 ship? in which he goes over the statement that Bill Gates inadvertently let slip that Windows 7 would arrive in 2009. Even ignoring the fact that I doubt; as would anyone with half a brain, that Bill Gates lets anything inadvertently slip the resulting furor that over took the blogosphere ranged from Bill Gates crazy talking to the real release date would be 2020.

The basic assumption for 2010 being the earliest possible date is because of the time that it took to get Vista to market which most folks peg at around 5+ years. The problem with this is that these pundits are missing a few very important facts around the release of Vista; which any Google search would turn up the facts of the time.

As pointed out on Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows F.A.Q. page Vista; or Longhorn as it was originally referred to actually began in 2001 and was based on the then XP code base. However about two years into the development there was a high level meeting with Gates, Ballmer and Allchin during which it is rumored that there where just to many problems with the current development and any further work on the Longhorn code base was stopped. The fact is that the development of the Vista that we know and love/hate today was started in mid 2004 and at that point was based on Windows Server 2003 SP1 code base.

Now given that Vista went to market in early 2007 that makes the actual development time of Vista about 2.5 years - not the 5+ that everyone likes to throw around. Even based on those figures of a 2.5 year turn around for a new operating system the idea of Windows 7 being available in 2009 isn’t that far fetched. However there is another little tidbit that got a little flurry of activity in the blogosphere when it was mentioned that Microsoft had something they called MinWin running - running enough to be able to be used in demos.

Details about MinWin were few and far between; and to a large degree still are, when Mary Jo Foley first reported about it back in October 2007; but even at that point it was being stated that

Going forward, MinWin will be at the heart of future versions of Windows Media Center, Windows Server, embedded Windows products and more.

While Microsoft people were saying publicly that MinWin was internal-only and “won’t be productized but it will be the basis for future products” they were able to show that the Windows OS core could be reduced to a mere 25 MB in contrast to Vista’s 4 GB. The thing to remember here is that MinWin had to already be under development during the later development of Vista and Vista’s release to the general public.

Now if we make an assumption based on what has already been published there is no reason not to believe that if MinWin; or something similar, is already well along on it’s development cycle; and Microsoft has already been making noises that the next consumer version of Windows will be very much a modular release we could very well see a new Windows OS near the end of 2009. After all even on a financial scale Microsoft cannot afford to miss another high dollar period as they did when Vista missed it’s Christmas shipping date.

I don’t proclaim to know or understand the in’s and out’s of Microsoft and how it does business but in this case I think I’ll be siding with Ed and look for Windows 7 to be under more than a few Christmas trees come 2009.

Conversation Tags: Microsoft, Windows, Vista, MinWin, Windows 7