Windows 7 — A Fresh Start on Vista's Foundations

Windows 7 was released on Thursday 22 October 2009. That was the day of general availability worldwide: on new PCs and as boxed software at more than 45,000 retailers, in 14 languages from the start. Japanese was one of them, and Japan got Windows 7 on the same day — in Akihabara, sales opened at the stroke of midnight on 22 October. The remaining languages followed from 31 October.

Microsoft had announced the release to manufacturing three months earlier, on 22 July 2009, with volume-licensing customers and MSDN and TechNet subscribers among the first to get the final code.

From preview to launch

The pre-order offer, which ran in the US from 26 June to 11 July 2009, sold Home Premium for $49.99 and Professional for $99.99, more than half off the regular prices.

Built to fit Vista's hardware

The most important sentence in Microsoft's first announcement was not about a feature. At PDC2008 the company said Windows 7 was designed to be compatible with the same hardware, applications and device drivers as Windows Vista. After the compatibility arguments that followed Vista, including the "Vista Capable" lawsuit, it amounted to telling Vista owners that their PCs would carry over.

The other headline was simplification. Microsoft's October 2008 release described improved navigation, a new taskbar and a streamlined interface that put commonly used resources within easy reach, multitouch gestures, Device Stage for cameras, phones and printers, and easier sharing of media with networked home devices. For developers it listed the new taskbar, the Ribbon and shell integration as ways to make applications easier to find and use. Steven Sinofsky, who ran Windows engineering, credited a new approach to planning and development.

The same announcement paired Windows 7 with Windows Live services for staying connected to people, and with Internet Explorer 8, which Microsoft promised would make the web faster, safer and more productive. Alongside Windows 7, attendees received a pre-beta of Windows Server 2008 R2, its server counterpart, which reached RTM on the same July day.

Prices

US estimated retail prices, announced on 25 June 2009:

Launch day

Microsoft's Windows blog marked the day with a list of retailers — Best Buy, Staples and Wal-Mart, plus Amazon and Microsoft's own online store — and noted that Microsoft was opening its first retail store, in Scottsdale, Arizona, the same day. For netbooks without DVD drives, it offered a tool that turned the downloaded ISO image into a bootable USB stick. The launch advertising leaned on the idea that millions of testers had shaped the product.

In Japan: midnight in Akihabara

ITmedia reported that DSP copies of Windows 7 — the edition sold with PC parts — went on general sale at 00:00 on 22 October in Akihabara, where shops held countdowns and late-night events. The crowd was estimated at well over a thousand people; nobody had an exact count, but people in the trade compared it to the best turnout since Windows 98 and put it at more than double Vista's. The first buyer at one shop had been queuing since ten the previous morning. The boxed retail version also went on sale at midnight, though the queue at one Yurakucho store was a modest fifteen people.

The first year

On its first anniversary Microsoft said more than 240 million licences of Windows 7 had been sold and called it the fastest-selling operating system in history. It also said that, as of September 2010, Windows 7 was running on 93% of new consumer PCs, and that six months after launch all of its more than 18,000 OEM partners were selling Windows 7 PCs, against 70% for Vista at the same point. It added that Windows 7 had more than 17% of the global operating system market as of 1 October 2010, citing Net Applications. All of these are Microsoft's own figures; licences sold are not the same as machines in use.

End of support

According to Microsoft's lifecycle data, mainstream support ended on 13 January 2015 and extended support on 14 January 2020, after which businesses could buy up to three years of Extended Security Updates. What happened to the many PCs still running Windows 7 by then, and how that compared with later deadlines, is covered under Windows 10's end of support.

Windows 7 was followed in 2012 by Windows 8, a far more radical redesign. For the wider story see the Microsoft timeline, the operating systems timeline and Microsoft.