News is drifting out that Microsoft intends to launch Windows 7 – that is, have PCs with it pre-loaded on retail sale – on October 22.

Not unexpected news – it is exactly what many of us predicted last year, after seeing it at PDC – but it is good to have it confirmed and will help users considering PC purchase decisions. There should be an announcement very soon about free upgrade offers, where you but a PC with Vista now, and get a free upgrade to 7 when available.

By the way, there’s a further gallery of Windows 7 images up on the Guardian Technology site. This is not just more of the same: I included some of the less publicised corners of the new OS, such as the new-but-not-improved Movie Maker, PowerShell scripting, and the option to remove Internet Explorer.

Update: An official announcement is here:

Microsoft will deliver Release to Manufacturing (RTM) code to partners in the second half of July. Windows 7 will become generally available on Oct. 22, 2009, and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be broadly available at the same time.

I’ve also amended the title of this post to remove the ambiguity between “Windows: 7 July” and “Windows 7: July” 🙂