So what exactly does General Availability mean?  Well that means it will be on store shelves for you and me to go and buy pretty much.

I can remember standing outside of an electronics store in New Jersey waiting for midnight to roll around to buy Windows 95 in August of 1995.  The line was huge and there was all kinds of people there.  Windows 95 was not the only thing on special that night but it certainly drew a crowd.

I think this release may result in a very similar environment.  From everything I read and see online this is going to be a very popular release of Windows.  I have said it before and will say it again – Windows 7 is to Windows Vista like Windows XP was to Windows Millennium Edition – the be all to end all – the cure for all that was wrong with the previous version of Windows.

Brandon Leblanc over at the Windows Blog has posted some news about the General Availability of Windows 7.

This is one of those posts where I’m truly excited to be writing. I get to tell you when Windows 7 will be on store shelves! According to input from customers and partners we’ve made a lot of progress with Windows 7.

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.

I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to see Windows 7 sitting on store shelves!

Brandon – speaking for myself – I will be at my local electronics retailer for their midnight event to get one of the first retail copies of Windows 7 – so I can not wait either.

Who else will be standing in line to get their own copy of Windows 7?