Bink has a report on the scheduled release date for "Windows 7". 7 is expected to be the next major release to succeed Windows Vista. It’s expected to be released in 2010. That would imply that we get a Vista R2 in 2008/2009 – to keep the SA customers form rioting. 7 is expected to be released on x86 and x64 architectures. My gut feeling is that this isn’t for hardware compatibility … by 2010 the x86 architecture will be a hard thing to find on or under desks (unless it’s being used as a foot rest). I’m thinking that software not being ported is probably the main driver for retaining x86 support.
Credit: Bink.