Microsoft announced MSDN and TechNet subscribers will get first crack at the Windows 7 release candidate (RC) on April 30, with an official public RC release scheduled for release on May 5.
"I’m pleased to share that the RC is on track for April 30th for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers," according to the Windows Team blog. "Broader, public availability will begin on May 5th."
Windows 7 previously was beta tested by users, and the RC is the last critical prerelease before the software’s official release.
Microsoft hopes to have its latest OS officially released sometime in late summer, in time for the back to school and holiday shopping seasons. Since Microsoft still has a stranglehold on pre-loading its software on many PCs and notebooks sold through brick and mortar retailers, it’s vital for the Redmond-based company to have an OS prior to the fall.
Considering what a massive flop Windows Vista turned out to be, Microsoft is said to be working quickly and diligently to make sure Windows 7 offers all the changes users expected from Vista. It’s understandable Microsoft wants to release its latest before fall, but it’s possible it could be pushed back until early 2010.
Despite a global economy that has hurt hardware sales, Microsoft simply is unable to wait to release Windows 7 the same way it waited for the Vista release. Furthermore, Microsoft is working to try and compete against netbooks — small, low-cost devices — that normally feature Linux operating systems, or the older Windows XP OS that Microsoft makes less money off of.
Vista, which had extremely high memory requirements and was incompatible with some hardware, has been fixed in the Windows 7 RC. Early reviews from beta testers show a promising OS that has received good reviews, especially compared to Vista beta reviews.
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From WinSupersite: "XP Mode consists of the Virtual PC-based virtual environment and a fully licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3). It will be made available, for free, to users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions via a download from the Microsoft web site."
XP mode? That one is funny. How MS would love for that pesky thing to die. Mas it seems to have more lives than a cat.
The first time I installed and used Vista I thought "Get me out of here!". It seemed to be worse than XP in every department. Anyway, it's a moot point, Vista is already dead, XP barely allowed it to get out of square one and Win 7 will make sure it stays there.
As for Win 7, we'll see what happens. Unless people perceive clear improvement maybe it will be the same as Vista.
Blu-ray playback within Media Center?
Blu-Ray data burning without 3rd party plugins.
Will Media Center fully support ATSC and Digital Cable Clear QAM?
If it doesn't it seems like just a waste. Will I have to wait for Windows 10?
With Win 7, what I get, are those fuzzy fonts, somewhat hard on the eye. With XP I use Powertoys, disable that stupid "Cleartype" thingy, which, for me, gives more trouble than it helps, and I get crystal clear fonts, very pleasing on the eye. Win 7 incorporates the "Cleartype" deactivation thing but it doesn't work properly or completely. I also deactivate the Display option to "smooth edges of onscreen fonts" (another stupid and counterproductive feature) and things get better. However there's still a lot of things which keep on using it, OS gadgets, tools, etc. The default font, Segoe UI, also doesn't appear to like being used that way, it looks ugly. I change it to Tahoma and Trebuchet MS and things do improve.
But this is all very hard to deal with, if I change the display theme some of these things revert to default values, there's again more fuzzy fonts, etc. A PITA. If the most important thing for me, display quality, is hard to deal with or doesn't function as expected and is worse than XP, what good will Win 7 be for me? Useless.
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