Windows 7 Release Candidate hits public download space

Stan Beer
Friday, 01 May 2009 03:57

Business IT - Technology

In one of the most anticipated releases from Microsoft since - well - Vista, Microsoft has announced the availability for public download of its come back operating system Windows 7. With Windows 7, Microsoft hopes to correct its mistaken market judgment call made when it released Vista.

At no time in its history has Microsoft faced bigger challenges, with the economic recession compounding the difficulties faced by Redmond, brought on to a large extent by the failure of Vista to match the trend to mobilisation brought on by the emergence of smaller Internet connected computers.

For the past 18 months, Microsoft has been forced to hastily resurrect Windows XP and practically give it away in order to gain a respectable market share in the netbook space. The results have been seen on the scoreboard with a marked drop in profits, in turn forcing Microsoft to lay off thousands of workers for the first time in 23 years.

With Windows 7, now available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers at http://technet.microsoft.com and available from May 5 for the public, Microsoft hopes to regain lost ground it gave up to Apple and in the netbook space to Linux.

According to Microsoft, the Windows 7 RC milestone is a result of feedback from millions of customers and partners around the world. The Beta builds have already been shown to perform impressively on notebooks and the feedback from testers is largely positive.

Microsoft says the RC release 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.

“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.”

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