Windows 8 to arrive by late October, Microsoft says

Finally: Microsoft has pinned some real availability dates on Windows 8.

Tami Reller, corporate vice president of Windows, told partners attending Microsoft's worldwide partner conference in Toronto that Windows 8 is on track to be released to manufacturing the first week of August, and to be generally available by late October 2012.

The October general availability date has been rumored for months. A late July RTM date for Windows 8 has been rumored for a while. I wouldn't be surprised, myself, to see the operating system be declared gold/RTM this month, in keeping with the Windows team's underpromise/overdeliver mantra.

Reller also announced at the partner show that Microsoft has sold 630 million Windows 7 licenses to date, up from 600 million at the beginning of June.

The Windows team's @BuildWindows8 account on Twitter recently repeated that the official guidance was that as of May 31, Microsoft execs had said to expect Microsoft to enter the "final phases" of the RTM process "in about two months," assuming all was seen as progressing well by Microsoft and its partners.

This story originally appeared at ZDNet under the headline "... [Read more]