Windows 7 RC hiding in plain sight...

...at the Enterprise Developer and Solutions Conference, on May 5 and 6, in New York. Cloud Computing in the Enterprise (Azure), Application Life Cycle Management and Creating Impact with Silverlight, WPF and Surface, were the main subjects of this event in which some of the sessions, if not all, were presented using Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) and nobody bothered to mention the fact, I noticed. In the meantime, to see if the changes and fixes of the Beta version are working as expected try Windows 7 RC.

Windows 7 RC ready for downloading

Since April 30 Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) version is ready to be downloaded for MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and this Tuesday, May 5, it will be available to everyone else at least through June 30. What this means is that Windows 7 is just one step ahead to be launched officially. I had predicted that Windows 7 would be released on November of 2009 but things are going faster and we should see the RTM version ("Release to Manufacturing") or "gold version", meaning that the software is ready for mass distribution, probably soon after the summer. Visit the Windows 7 official site for all the information you may need.