"Our milestone-to-milestone approach for Windows 7 is built on a great deal of feedback from customers and testers. This has been pivotal to the development of Windows 7.
I blogged a few weeks ago that it’s looking like we’ll have Windows 7 ready in time for the holidays.
Since then we’ve made enough progress to feel really good about announcing today that Windows 7 will be in stores beginning October 22nd."
-Brandon LeBlanc
SOURCE: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/06/02/the-date-for-general-availability-ga-of-windows-7-is.aspx