Windows 7 RC Now Available for MSDN, TechNet

Windows 7 RC is here!... for some of you

As Microsoft promised over the weekend, Windows 7 Release Candidate is now officially available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers.

Microsoft said in its press release that the RC milestone indicates the operating system is entering the final phases of development and is ready for partners to develop new applications, device drivers and services, and ready for IT pros to evaluate Windows 7 and examine how it will operate in their environment.

In other words, it’s almost ready for prime time.

“Listening to our partners and customers has been fundamental to the development of Windows 7,” said Bill Veghte, senior vice president for the Windows business at Microsoft. “We heard them and worked hard to deliver the highest quality Release Candidate in the history of Windows. We have more partner support than we’ve ever had for an RC and are pleased to say that the Windows 7 RC has hit the quality and compatibility bar for enterprises to start putting it through its paces and testing in earnest.”

The system requirements for the Release Candidate are the same as they were for the pubic beta released early this year.

• 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 GB of RAM (32-bit)/2 GB of RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB of available disk space (32-bit)/20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 or higher driver

Early birds who jumped in the RC download when it went live on the Microsoft site at 6 a.m. this morning found decent download speeds, but recent reports from those who are trying to download it are saying that servers are currently overloaded. No surprises there. Click here for the TechNet download page.

For those of you who don’t have TechNet or MSDN accounts (and would prefer to grab the ‘official’ disc image from Microsoft), the Windows 7 RC will be hitting the public on May 5.