Lincity

Windows 7 is the updated version of the Vista operating system from Microsoft. It was built around feedback from users and has been developed to work with touch screen controls, among other features.

However, because Microsoft isn’t providing technical support for the Beta, I strongly recommend that only experienced computer users sign up. How experienced? At minimum, you should be comfortable backing up a computer, formatting a hard drive, burning an ISO file to DVD, and installing an operating system from scratch. You should also be comfortable troubleshooting problems on your own. If you’ve not used beta software before, please read the warning messages and make sure you know what you’re getting into.

Windows release candidate is available free to everyone form http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx
and is licensed including a free KEY number, which will continue to work until 1st July 2010. After which you will have to remove it.

PLEASE NOTE at this time of writing, there is no easy upgrade from the free RC1 to the full purchaced version of windows 7.

You will have to do a full reinstall sometime before July 2010.

Windows 7 provides an improved task bar and full-screen previews. Jump Lists put the documents you want handy and the ones you’ve used recently a couple clicks away. Desktop enhancements simplify how you work with the windows on your desktop. You’ll have more intuitive ways to open, close, resize, and arrange them. Introduced with Windows Vista, Windows Search helps you find virtually anything on your PC quickly and easily. Windows 7 also makes search results more relevant and easier to understand. Available now, Internet Explorer 8 helps you do what you want online, faster. With Windows 7, you’ll use a single Devices and Printers screen to connect, manage, and use whatever printers, phones, and other devices you have on-hand.

Crisp, clean, speedy, and highly-usable: It’s the Windows 7 release candidate!
This is possibly the best release of windows ever.

In general terms, we can already see major improvements. Looked at across the span of these two preceding releases, the Windows 7 RC is a shining star of performance, usability, stability, and maturity. Yes, there are teething pains, bits of inconsistency that will drive purists nuts (for example, Microsoft can’t seem to settle on a single spelling or capitalization scheme for the HomeGroup feature).

But Windows 7, in release candidate guise, is already a towering achievement that casts Windows Vista immediately in its shadow. I’ve often opined that the true measure of any OS is how painful it renders using its predecessor. And now, several long months after moving to Windows 7 full time, I can honestly state that Windows 7 makes Windows Vista look like a bad dream by comparison. Among many other things, Vista is sluggish compared to 7, and it doesn’t remember window sizes and customization styles. (Windows XP, which lacks so many Vista/7-era features that it’s painful to even discuss, fares even worse by comparison, except in the performance category.)

So here we are on the cusp of a new Windows. A Windows that is faster than its predecessor and runs just fine on low-end netbook hardware. It’s more compatible with both hardware and software, especially when you factor in the exciting new XP Mode feature. It’s more secure and reliable. And, most important from an end user perspective, it’s more usable. Now, more than ever, it seems like Microsoft has examined every single nhook and cranny in this OS and has tweaked and gussied up virtually all of it. Some of the user experience changes, like the new taskbar, are immediately obvious on first boot, while other more minor changes simply become apparent over time in the using. There’s a happy change around every corner, it seems.

This, then, is the Windows 7 release candidate. And while Microsoft continues to promise only that it will ship Windows 7 sometime by early 2010, I’m here to tell you that Microsoft’s public schedule is almost comically conservative. The Windows 7 RC could literally ship as the final version of the product. There are mitigating factors that will prevent that from happening–persistent rumors of a new UI skin among them–