News - Microsoft Windows 7 Release Candidate coming in two weeks

[HEXUS]

Sooner than expected?

Read more.

[Vadim]

things are moving faster when the cash flow is needed...

[LuckyNV]

RC has already been leaked, usual sources

[Funkstar]

RC has already been leaked, usual sources

Behave. An interesting and useful thread has already been closed over that.

[3dcandy]

I think it's fair to say that a very small amount of searching will turn up that build 7100 is the RC. However, after the success of build 7000, which is the beta, it's a sure fire certainty that MS will get this out as soon as possible. Early figures are saying that people aren't gonna buy it however, prefering to wait a bit longer...might give Ubuntu 9.04 a chance as that's pretty good!

[Splash]

I'll grab it on Thursday from Technet I think - I didn't use 7000 too much due to problems with DRM in FM2009, will give it another shot then.

[cheesemp]

Is it just me or does Win7 feel like service pack to Vista and is more or less just a rebranding exercise. I think we saw just as much improvement in Xp Sp1 > Xp Sp2 (minus a different task bar of course). I hope MS do a cheap upgrade otherwise they are screwing us with Vista.

[how1]

Can anyone get it?

[Splash]

Can anyone get it?

When it goes to general availability, yes.

[Funkstar]

Is it just me or does Win7 feel like service pack to Vista and is more or less just a rebranding exercise. I think we saw just as much improvement in Xp Sp1 > Xp Sp2 (minus a different task bar of course). I hope MS do a cheap upgrade otherwise they are screwing us with Vista.

This has been discussed before. Win7 is to Vista what XP was to Win2K, Win98 to Win95, NT 3.5 to NT 3 etc.

Well maybe not exactly, but you get the idea.

[LuckyNV]

Behave. An interesting and useful thread has already been closed over that.

alright didn't know my apologies

[TheAnimus]

I hope MS do a cheap upgrade otherwise they are screwing us with Vista.

No they will do an apple.

As apple fans seam happy to pay £100 for service packs per year, MS want a slice of that pie!

Upgrade will cost a fortune, OEM will be cheaper.

[shaithis]

Yup, will be full-priced. So, early adopters get screwed. Had Vista not been slated by the media and misinformed idiots all over the web, it's sales would have been considerably stronger and we might have seen this as a service pack.

Instead, not many bought it so they are releasing it as a new product.

I will be upgrading all mine with Business Edition VLKs, sod paying for a service pack.

[scaryjim]

Had Vista not been slated by the media and misinformed idiots all over the web, it's sales would have been considerably stronger and we might have seen this as a service pack.

7 is far more than a Vista service pack. I think it's far more correct to say that Vista was an early 7 beta! 7 is inherently more usable than Vista, and appears to be much more stable (even as a beta). I would say it's more responsive and better performing, but I can't really make that judgement as I've only used Vista on laptops (the most powerful of which is a Core 2 Duo T7250 with 2GB RAM) and I mostly use 7 on a Q6600 with 4GB RAM (so it's not exactly a fair comparison!), however Vista on that laptop felt like XP on a Duron 1200 with 256MB RAM - a bit sluggish and slow to respond. I'd love to get 7 beta onto something less powerful, but I don't have anything between an Athlon + 512MB and a Q6600 + 4GB at home!

And it wasn't just misninformed idiots who slated Vista - I slated it after 6 months of trying *very hard* to configure it to be responsive and usable. It simply wasn't. The bottom line is that an OS should work smoothly on its minimum required hardware out of the box without having to mess about or configure anything. That's its job. If it doesn't it's failing, and Vista just didn't do that. 7 appears to, so far. It's just such a shame that MS will cripple it with a huge pricetag...

[3dcandy]

I'm guessing a huge price tag too, but am more hopeful than I have ever been that the price tag may be at least semi affordable....if not MS will see an even bigger drop in revenue. At least Windows 7 makes MS have a decent alternative in the OS market, one that's fluid and responsive (mainly, it can chug sometimes). Problem is Ubuntu 9.04 and OSX are all nice too....and one of them is free!

[shaithis]

7 is far more than a Vista service pack.

That's a matter of opinion and only a handful of people at Microsoft would know if it was going to be a service pack had Vista not bombed due to bad publicity.

Vista on 3 machines here, without a single problem.