After releasing several Beta versions of Windows 7 for users to try, Microsoft has released its RC1 version (Release Candidate 1). Users who are subscribed to MSDN can already download this release as fom April 29, while members from the general public will get access to the download as from tomorrow, 5th May upto the end of June. Microsoft has specified that there will be no restrictions on the number of downloads or license keys to be used.
The RC release, if you are wondering, is a version close to the final one, although not the final one, with bugs and other issues from the Beta releases corrected, therefore more stable for use. Windows 7 is built to run faster, and more stable than Vista (the ‘Blue Screen Of Death’ occurs too often in Vista and it crashes more than any OS), with some improvements on the appearance of the desktop, the taskbar and icons in general, along with the Control Panel, User Account as well as new keyboard shortcuts included.
Notice in the above screenshots of the desktops that the taskbar only shows the icons of the programs which the user has opened, unlike in XP or Vista where you get the icon + the name. It has been named ‘Superbar’, and the sidebar/dock usually associated in Vista is here called PieDock :
‘Superbar’ 
‘Pie Dock’
To be able to run Windows 7, your computer must at leat meet these requirements:
° 1GHz Processor (32/64 bit)
° 1GB RAM (32-bit) / 2GB RAM (64-bit)
° 16GB HardDisk space for 32-bit / 20GB for 64-bit
° DirectX 9.0 compatible VGA with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
For more screenshots and downloads (themes, wallpapers), visit: Windows7News and Windows7Center (can also download the RC version from this site).
XP and Vista users can also download the 7 transformation pack from: AskVG and WindowsXLive.
Of course official and legal downloads + news can be found at Microsoft.com 
Windows 7 rules..
wow.. its so massive to install on a p4.. it will be better for multithreaded PCs..
Windows 7 is such an eye candy! I think I’m going to install it in parallel on another PC cause I’m already using Ubuntu and I’m kind of dependent on it for the time being.
I’ll be switching to 7 as soon as it’s RTMed.
While being a resource hog, Vista is very stable for me. Not a single crash this year – except when my PSU burnt.
I’ll probably be reviewing Windows 7 RC1 as soon as the exams are over. But so far, I’ve seen no major change (from UX pov) between Beta 1(review here) & RC1.
Only Adobe products I use are Reader and Flash Player, both of which have been unstable under Vista. Asfor Apple, both iTunes and Quicktime have frequently beenresponsible for crashes.
Maybe I have just been lucky on Vista, but I have run it on 4 different machines, and the only one I had trouble on was one that only had 1 gb RAM.
Hmm i meant XP and Open-Source like Ubuntu in the comment below
, even the previous versions to XP, like Win98,NT,2000 didnt crash that often like Vista does.
“…the ‘Blue Screen Of Death’ occurs too often in Vista and it crashes more than any OS…”
I am curious where those stats come from? Or is it just a general feel from all the Vista-bashing in the Internet?
I have been running Vista since before it was Vista, and actually have found it to be quite stable – a memory hog, but stable. Almost every crash I have had on Vista has been due to third-party products whose developers could not be bothered updating their code properly (mostly Adobe and Apple).
cheers
Well am not a vista-basher but I’ve installed vista on my pc, which of course is vista compatible, but still with 2GB memory it was really slow, and the blue screen appeared like every hour… many friends of mine as well got this problem of blue screen, and eventually am using XP SP3. On many forums as well I’ve read about Vista crashing, so this may be for around 60% + ppl vista doesnt work properly although we have the required specs. Unlike XP, or even open-source, Ubuntu rarely crash, unless a file is missing somewhere. I just hope Win7 doesnt let its users down! Concerning Adobe, apart from Photoshop and Acrobat, many other apps are not used by common ppl, and Apple only Safari and iTunes work on Windows if am correct.