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Windows 7 on the fast track, release candidate due in April?

by Parm Mann on 23 February 2009, 10:45

Tags: Windows 7, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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Despite Microsoft's reluctance to expand on its Windows 7 release time frame of roughly three years after Vista, many in the industry believe its flagship operating system could be readily available in time for the 2009 holiday season.

Adding to the Windows 7 rumour mill, the folks at Neowin claim a source within Microsoft has confirmed that a release candidate will be launched on April 10th. The significance is that Microsoft is expected to follow the current beta release with only one release candidate, followed finally by the completed retail release.

Although further details are non-existent and Microsoft has thus far opted not to comment, an April 10 launch of the Windows 7 RC could hint at a retail launch before the end of the year. Looking back, Microsoft's current flagship operating system - Windows Vista - reached retail just three months after the launch of its final release candidate. Should a similar time frame be applicable to Windows 7, it could, in theory, be in stores as early as July.

It is, of course, strictly speculation, but we're sticking with our early prediction; Windows 7 could be just months away.



HEXUS Forums :: 25 Comments

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It appears that Microsoft are woried at their own eroding cash cow that is Windows. How it must hurt that the only hardware that appears to be selling well has to run on XP Home because Vista is such a dog….so get Windows 7 out sharpish so the others (Linux) don't gain at your expense. However, in my rough and ready tests, Windows 7 build 7000 beta, really does perform much better than Vista in the majority of cases. This laptop I'm on now is much smoother and responsive, driver issues apart, and a much better and useful tool now it's running 7. I initially thought about going back to xp, but may shell out for a retail copy of 7, something I wouldn't dare to do with Vista!
I hope so. I use Windows 7 on my main desktop at home, and I've never enjoyed using Windows as much. Don't get me wrong, I like XP, and I think it'll still be used for a long time as you really can run it on minimal software (P3 @ 550MHz and 256MB SDR in our meeting room at work!), but Windows 7 is somewhat more intuitive and user friendly. My only worry about it is going to be the price - retail packages are *bound* to be expensive enough to put me off buying a copy…
Win7 is Vista.

After all the mess and the restart of the development
of Vista they rushed the OS instead fine tuning it.

Win7 is the fine tuning.

I'm running Vista on 6GB & i7 and it's running more stable and faster than XP ever did.
Anosh
I'm running Vista on 6GB & i7 and it's running more stable and faster than XP ever did.
Have you run XP on your 6GB i7? And done any meaningful benchmarks?

Being able to run smoothly on bleeding edge hardware isn't the job of an operating system. It should run smoothly on the lowest spec hardware it is still economically viable to make: currently a 1.6GHZ single core processor and 1GB RAM. Besides, the improvements in Windows 7 aren't just about stability and performance, it's also a much better OS to use than Vista. Simple fact is, I used Vista both at home and at work and hated every minute of it - I no longer have Vista on any computer I use. I am now using Windows 7 at home, and will be sad when Microsoft ask me to pay up at the end of my beta, because I really want to own a copy but I'm sure it'll be more expensive than I'm willing to pay.

Windows 7 is only as much Vista as XP was 2000. Technologically it's not that much different, but the vast majority of users don't care about that. And I can guarantee it'll be a much greater commercial success than Vista, because people will enjoy using it. And that's the ultimate yardstick…
I have no intention of buying any more copies of Vista, so the sooner Windows 7 is out the better as far as I'm concerned. Nonetheless, if they want to iron out bugs, then that's great, especially since it sounds pretty good already.