October 23 release for Windows 7?

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 1 May 2009 at 09:19

Acer's vice president may have inadvertently outed the release date of Windows 7 in a press conference.

Speaking at the launch of a new range of laptops and netbooks, Acer's vice-president Massimo D'Angelo claimed that Acer would be shipping Windows 7-loaded machines by 23 October "and not a day before".

If true, it puts a Windows 7 release three months earlier than Microsoft's official January 2010 date. A date the company stuck to when we questioned it this morning.

A sheepish D'Angelo was quickly harangued by journalists asking if he'd just let the cat out of the bag on the Windows 7 release date, to which he replied "he had not".

The slip follows a similar incident involving Asus chief executive Jerry Shen, who earlier in the year noted that his company would be shipping a Windows 7-based Eee PC in the second half of 2009.

Microsoft is making a big push with Windows 7, effectively offering users a year's free use with the Release Candidate.