Microsoft has made available for download the language packs for the gold development milestone of Windows 7. The Redmond-based company is attempting to help end users across the world tailor Windows 7 RTM to their specific language. According to the software giant, the language packs for Windows 7 have been released via Windows Update. In this regard, Windows 7 users will have to turn to WU in order to install extra languages into their copy of Windows 7 in addition to the default language.

By offering the language packs through Windows Update, Microsoft is following the same strategy that it did with Windows Vista. In this context, the company is restricting access to the language packs. And, of course, the limitations also survived from Vista. Microsoft permitted only users of the two high-end editions of Windows Vista to install additional languages, Enterprise and Ultimate. The same is the case for Windows 7.

“These language packs are available to our enterprise customers running Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate RTM versions only. Customers on the Windows 7 Release Candidate are not eligible for these language packs,” revealed Microsoft’s Stephen L. Rose.

Essentially, users running the RTM build 7600.16835 of Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate can go to Windows Update and identify the language packs offered as updates for the operating system. At the same time, only Windows 7 RTM Enterprise and Ultimate are designed to integrate the language packs. This because the two editions are the only SKUs that come with support for Multilingual User Interface Packs (MUI Packs).

“Traditional Chinese –Taiwan will be released at a later date,” Rose stated. Microsoft did not indicate when exactly the Traditional Chinese –Taiwan language pack would be offered to Windows 7 RTM customers, but there are more than enough language packs to keep users busy.

Here are the Windows 7 RTM Enterprise and Ultimate language packs that Microsoft did release:

Arabic
Brazilian
Portuguese
Bulgarian
Chinese – Simplified
Chinese – Traditional – Hong Kong
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Estonian
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Lithuanian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbian Latin
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian.