Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista were both “Released to Manufacturers” (RTM) earlier this week. This is significant milestone for Microsoft, as this is the final (initial) version that will be released to customers.

The RTM stage is where Microsoft sends the final version to manufacturers for finalizing the development of their products to run on the new system. Over the coming weeks, third party manufacturers will be developing new drivers, testing new and existing programs and troubleshootin issues so that things run smootly when the general availability is made to consumers.

As far as availability, we also now know some of the release dates:

MSDN Subscriber Downloads:
For those of us who have MSDN subscriptions, we will be able to download the RTM version of Office 2007 beginning on Sunday, November 12th. Vista will be available starting Friday, November 17th. It does take time for the build to replicate to all their servers though, so if its not there immediately, go back in a couple of hours.

Business Licensing:
If you subscribe to the volume licensing programs with Microsoft, you will be able to purchase Vista beginning in November 2006. (Last I heard, the date was November 30, 2006.)

General Availability:
The general availability of the products will be January 30, 2007, at which point Windows Vista will be broadly available as a stand-alone product or pre-installed on new PCs.

To learn more about Windows Vista, please visit the Windows Vista homepage. For Office 2007, please see the Microsoft Office homepage.