In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft released the shipping dates for Windows 7 yesterday. According to the Windows 7 team blog, the final released bits for Windows 7 will hit RTM some time in the second half of July with general availability on October 22, 2009.

The post also described a free upgrade program for those who purchase new PCs running Windows Vista prior to October 22nd, but no details are available yet on the timing or details of the program.

This is an extremely exciting announcement. Windows 7 has received overwhelmingly good reviews from users and analysts, even those who were highly critical of Windows Vista and of the Microsoft platform in general. If you want to try our Windows 7 today, be sure to download the release candidate and try it out. I’ve been running the RC on my primary machine for several weeks and haven’t run into any performance or stability issues at all. In fact, it’s hard for me to sit down at a Vista machine anymore. Windows 7 will spoil that experience for you altogether.