"Windows 7 Client" Category Added to Windows Update

Perhaps Microsoft will make their seemingly aggressive January 2010 date for Windows 7 after all. They've already added a "Windows 7 Client" category to Windows Update and to the Microsoft Update Catalog (see above, click to enlarge).

This was announced on the Microsoft Update Product Team Blog on Thursday, although the actual changes occurred Wednesday:

Yesterday a new product category for Windows 7 Client was published to Windows Update and was made available to WSUS (another one for Windows 7 Server should be appearing soon as well). As with all of our other new product categories, this is for Microsoft teams who are publishing Windows 7 beta drivers/updates in the near future. In the future, we’ll try to let you know about new categories ahead of time.

Sounds like they might have been surprised, too.

Some of the drivers are even from 2007, such as this one, from NVIDIA, but remember that Microsoft earlier said that Vista drivers would be compatible with Windows 7.

To be honest, most of the entries in the catalog that say Windows 7 also say Windows Vista, so it all makes sense. On the other hand, since some of them are as old as January 2007, I wouldn't expect an optimal experience from them in Windows 7 simply because they are listed in the catalog.

This doesn't necessarily point to an upcoming beta, however. Remember that Microsoft earlier published guidelines (.PDF) indicating that starting on June 1st of this year, hardware manufacturers had to supply a set of test logs for Windows 7 to receive certification for Windows Vista.