Upcoming products, stock and display issues

I've got a few downloadable products that I plan to have available for sale/download come November 1. What I want to do is between now and Nov 1 I want them displayed in the "Upcoming box" where users can read about the products, but NOT be able to add them to cart and purchase/download them.

I've tried the following:
a) Set product with stock and an "Available date" of November 1 --> result: users can add it to cart.
b) Set product to "Out of Stock" --> result: product no longer displays in Upcoming box, so users cannot read about it
c) Set "Products status in Catalog when out of stock should be set to" to 1, thinking this would mean that if I marked product as Out of Stock, it would still display --> result: didn't happen - product no longer displays.

Any guidance, suggestions, much appreciated -- Terrific product

If not using Call for Price ... change the image and text

Clone Call for Price ...

Customize the code to verify the products_date_available and prevent checkout when not current ...

Thanks for the quick response... you set me on the right track...I think!

What I ended up doing (and which appears to work) is
1)as per your instructions, make the item Call for Price (which I'm not planning on using otherwise)

Then there were the two call to price indicators on the product page to deal with -- the graphic button near the top and the text link near the bottom.

For the graphic, I just made a 1*1 pixel image and called it call_for_prices.jpg and overwrote the existing image -- that's that problem gone.

For the second one, it was a bit more tricky as I'm still figuring out where everything is hidden away/organised. What I ended up doing was commenting out the following:

$return_button = '<a href="' . zen_href_link(FILENAME_CONTACT_US) . '">' . TEXT_CALL_FOR_PRICE . '</a>';

On line 1133 of functions_general.php -- the result of commenting it out is that nothing shows, so there is no way for the user to add the item to the cart -- or not that I've figured out anyways.

Thanks again

ive got the same issue with my site.....this looked the goods for a fix, but is there a more elegant way?

if not, can you please point me to the files i need to edit?

thanks.

Tim