And the next version of Windows, codenamed “Windows 7” will be called……

…….Windows 7!

Thanks to Mark from the Active Directory user group  for pointing this out. It was announced on the Windows Vista Team Blog.

And, as you probably know, since we began development of the next version of the Windows client operating system we have been referring to it by a codename, "Windows 7." But now is a good time to announce that we've decided to officially call the next version of Windows, "Windows 7."

While I know there have been a few cases at Microsoft when the codename of a product was used for the final release, I am pretty sure that this is a first for Windows.