You cannot purchase a retail copy of Windows 7 at this point, officially. The last day of retail availability was October 30th, 2013. System builders can still include the operating system in their PCs, however, until October 31st, 2014.
Windows 7 Professional is the exception.
The Windows lifecycle website claims that OEMs can include Professional in PCs until a to-be-announced date. That date will be at least one year after whenever they decide to announce it. As of February 16th, the date is still listed as "Not yet established".
I should note that Volume Licensing customers have downgrade rights and installation media available for the two versions prior to whatever is current. In short, they have their own timeline.
Basically, we know that preinstalled Windows 7 Professional availability is on a countdown timer. We know that timer is at least one year long. We do not know how much longer than a year it will be. We also do not know when the announcement will be made and thus, when the timer will start ticking.
The Ars Technica article claims that this Windows 7 Professional OEM extension is for business users. That said, a fair amount of those users are on volume licensing. Another possibility is that Microsoft wants to bridge the gap between Windows 7 and the rumored "Windows 9" for enthusiasts. "Threshold", as it is codenamed, is supposed to address users who are primarily in the desktop interface. Professional would give them devices to purchase until then, without the general public purchasing a cheap Windows 7 machine and intending to use it for a decade (potentially beyond Windows 7's EOL in 2020).
Windows 7 Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate will no longer be preinstalled in PCs on October 31st, 2014. Windows 7 Professional will be available for some unannounced time afterward.
More concerned with if/when
More concerned with if/when Microsoft will pull the Windows 7 images from Digital River.
Why, in the first place, does
Why, in the first place, does an OS supplier/s have so much control over hardware that it does not manufacture? TIFKAM and its little brother Android(less so but still), are abstracting hardware away from its users and into closed app store ecosystems. Its not that some hardware abstraction is OK, in fact necessary, but locking down third party hardware to only certain runtimes (RT, dalvik) and not having a full OS available to run other applications outside of the runtime, is just a waste of computing resources. On a cell phone, maybe, but cell phone CPUs can run a full Linux distro, and users of chromebooks have enough power to run a full linux distro, while cell phones may not have the battery resources, but even that is changing, as some cell phones are running VMs and hosting multiple OS instences. The windows 7 UI is just about as good as it will ever get with M$, and all the TIFKAM runtime and services should be relageted to a totally optional download and install, in future M$ OSs. M$ needs to have a productivity based OS for content creators and enterprises that has a long term support cycle with respect to the UI, and allow the user to purchase this with their computers, and never should have been allowed to force TIFKAM, or IE onto the user. There needs to be a hardware freedom ACT to protect users and purchasers of third party hardware against any forced OS preloads! If any hardware abstraction should be allowed and good for computer owners, it should be the VMs that enable computers to run multiple OS instences, of the same or different OSs, at the same time! Users should buy a computer that boots up into a type one hyporvisor and has one instence of the person’s OS of choice installed and running under the OEMs hyporvisor( an indistry standard hyporvisor that the entire OEM industry develops and uses open and free). Give the user maxium choice and the PC market will renew itself, lock the user in and they will just not buy. Give computer users a Hyporvisor to run any OSs, and any amount of the same or different OSs at once, hardware resources permitting, and make descrete GPUs into complete CPU/GPU systems that run on a PCI card(hosting the gaming OS and game engine/game) and watch the PC market take off again.
I’ve completely and will
I’ve completely and will completely skip Windows “Tablet Edition” (Windows 8) and will wait for them to release an os for the pc again.