Public release of Windows 7 Release Candidate set for May 5

[Ian]

The Windows 7 Release Candidate is coming on May 5th!

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs ... may-5.aspx

We are pleased to announce that Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) is available. Windows 7 RC is the prerelease version of Windows 7. Since this is not the final release, your PC will gather and send information to Microsoft engineers to help them check the fixes and changes made based on testing of Windows 7 Beta.

Test-drive Windows 7 RC today to see for yourself—and to show your colleagues and customers—how Windows 7 delivers improved management, security, reliability, and performance.

Download Windows 7 RC

Partners: If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now. Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009.

[LoneWolf]

I'm running Build 7057 right now, and have 7077 available, but I'm thinking I'll wait.

Build 7100 has supposedly just been released to TAP partners as the RC. Won't be long before it's on Technet, and then it'll be widely available within a day of that.

It runs quite well on my Thinkpad. 32-bit apps run quite well on the 64-bit version; I've had maybe one issue.

I'm also somewhat impressed with the beta of SP2 for Vista, which brings real performance gains, and finally makes Vista (IMO) a usable operating system.

[LoneWolf]

Build 7100 has been leaked, both in x86 and x64 versions.

[Ian]

Yep, nothing really new in it either.

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs ... -here.aspx

[Dartman]

I've been happily plugging along on the original beta release now for a while, using the 32 bit version so all my old crap still works well. Don't know if it's safe to run the 64 bit with all these legacy 32 bit programs I use all the time.
Only major issues were a ATI video driver and network/file sharing seemed to be causing BSOD every so often, since I disabled it no more of them so far. My geek friend no doubt will give me this version next time we get together, hope I don't have to do another clean install, just got everything I like working nicely on this one.

[Ian]

I've been running the original beta in a VM on my laptop. I'm probably going to pick up a netbook to run the RC and the eventual final version.

[Ian]

The RC was put up on Technet and MSDN this morning. They're getting frigging slammed right now.

[LoneWolf]

Got a leak of the RC this weekend, and installed it Tuesday night. Still running x64.

Had a few driver issues I didn't have with previous releases; had to back my router down to support WPA/WPA2 rather than just WPA2 for WiFi. Took me a bit to get my fingerprint reader going too, but that's fine now.

Also got the RTMs of SP2 for Vista, but haven't gotten to test yet.

[Ian]

Jeebus.. why'd they have to include x86, x64, i64 and English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish languages on the SP2 DVD. Its like 1.3GB in size.

[Ian]

I applied SP2 to my laptop. So far so good.

[Ian]

For those that haven't grabbed it yet:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... nload.aspx

The official release date is supposedly October 23rd.