Microsoft announced its plans to go retail in February and yesterday, at the Worldwide Partner Conference, the company's COO Kevin Turner has confirmed that the offensive will start this fall. Turner didn't really go into any detail as to how the stores will look like but he dropped a small bomb by saying that some of them will open right next to Apple stores.

Headed by ex-DreamWorks exec David Porter, Microsoft's retail endeavor is planned to provide a better retail purchase experience for consumers worldwide. What this means, we'll see this fall, probably around or before Windows 7's release, which is scheduled for October 22nd.