Windows 7 RC is available for two months
A couple weeks before the Windows 7 RC came out, I formatted back to Vista so I could test the upgrade process. I found myself missing various smaller features that made Win7 so much nicer to use. Even the simple feature of moving the “show desktop” feature to the bottom right of the taskbar instead of as a quick launch shortcut.
Well, a little under a week ago the RC was released to testers and I’ve been pretty happy with it. Some features were added but if you’ve used the beta you probably won’t notice many significant changes — it is mostly bug fixes and optimizations. I’ve not only been running it on my desktop, but on my Eee PC where it has been performing quite well with no tweaks.
Today the RC was released for anyone to download, and will be available for the next two months. Developers can also download the SDK to get a head start on writing applications for it.
I’m happy that Windows Media Center, perhaps the most problematic portion of the beta, has got the polish it needed. It is much more stable and finally looks like something other than the TV Pack that was kind of released for Vista. One of the biggest feature complaints was recording to an incompatible “.wtv” format, which has been somewhat alleviated by a “convert to .dvr-ms” option which is enabled for non-DRMed .wtv recordings.
