Windows 7 Release Candidate

The RC (“Release Candidate”) version of Microsoft Windows 2007 is available since April 30, 2009. This is an important milestone in bringing to the general public the much anticipated update to this desktop operating system (OS).

 OK, what’s the deal?

Windows 7 might very well be the first OS in history to have LOWER system requirements than its predecessor and to actually run FASTER on similar configurations. According to Microsoft’s own development team, “this time, they got it”. Although it provides the usual bunch of user interface improvements and goodies, Windows 7 is simply a leaner, faster and more robust evolution.

Yeah, but what about what really matters?

Since you are like me fanatical about automated document output, you’ll share my enthusiasm about this feature improvement oddly overlooked by most other reviewers: With Windows 7 comes a new release of WordPad (a basic but free text processor) which now supports the Office 2007, OpenXML standard, DOCX file format.

We’ve tested WordPad with a Word document containing killer features (to the left), with reasonable results (to the right).

 

WordPad did very well with standard text formatting and images, OK with the table (losing some of its format) and could not handle headers, footers, table of content and charts. Still

Going back to Windows 7, should I install the RC?

Although the Release Candidate is impressively solid and stable, I do not recommend you install it on a production computer. Unless you really like toying with computers and living (somewhat) dangerously, you’re better off waiting for the general availability scheduled for October 22, 2009.

Windows 7 Official Web Site:

Download page for the RC

Minimum System Requirements:

1 GB of RAM for the 32-bit version

2 GB of RAM for the 64-bit version