No more is it a Beta project. Windows 7 has official been released to the manufacturers for production (or RTM) – the first phase in the release development cycle.
New copies of the OEM version of the Operating System have been sent to the major PC builders for installing on new computers. This being the first in 3 final stages, where General Availability (GA) follows shortly, before the Operating System goes “Gold” – or is deemed a Live Release – which is due to happen on October 22nd.
I’ve been running the Release Candidate of the software for a while now on my laptop – and I’m really impressed. It’s stability is very good, speed excellent (dropping somewhere between Vista & XP in my opinion) and everything else just feels really nicely polished off. There a few changes to the menus and things if you’re used to Vista, but it’s all things to make your life easier thankfully, which was one of my biggest gripes with Vista over XP.
I’m looking forward to the new release, although I don’t see the step up from Vista big enough in my opinion, so not sure yet if I’ll upgrade. If I can be convinced everything I need will work on Windows 7 at home, then I may change my mind. Of course my release candidate will run out next year, where I’ll either have to upgrade on my laptop or revert back to Vista – which will be difficult. I can’t imagine using Vista during my working day…