It's no secret that Windows 7 will ship before the end of the year, but a prominent Taiwanese tech executive has narrowed the release date to late September or early October, according to a Bloomberg report. Ray Chen, president of Compal Electronics, told analysts at investors' conference in Taipei on Wednesday that Microsoft's much-anticipated OS may also ignite PC sales, which have been hit hard by the global recession. But despite his optimism for Windows 7, Chen expects that worldwide laptop shipments won't improve much over last year's global totals of 120 million to 125 million, the report states.