The Release Candidate for Windows 7 is already available to MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers and will be downloaded by hundreds of thousands when it is publicly released this coming Tuesday (May 5th).

Not just another “normal” beta release, this version should be relatively feature-complete and stable (although the Win7 beta previously released was pretty darn solid).  But the even more interesting item of note is the fact that this version will be good until June 2010.

The beta that Microsoft released just a few short months ago was usable until this coming August.  This led to many rumors of a fall release date for the shippable product; a rumor that was denied repeatedly by Microsoft.

Does a move to next summer mean that we won’t see the operating system until my 36th birthday?  I doubt it.  In the past, release candidates were usually designed to overlap a bit so that users could get comfortable with the OS, becoming obligated to purchase the final version in order to keep the features upon which they had become accustomed.

I believe that Microsoft will release Windows 7 sometime in early 2010, although I hope that I’m wrong.  I would much rather, as a computer retailer, see a undeniably compelling reason for people to buy computers this coming holiday season!