Starting next week, provided the servers stay up, expect to see Windows 7 RC 1 available from Microsoft for the low price of free. It’s just a release candidate, but it will give you a good idea as to what the final product will be. The Release Candidate will allow you to be up and running until the 1st of June, 2010.
For those of you that are still on Windows XP, Windows 7 offers many performance improvements, including enhancements to security and changes to the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Similar to the change from Windows 98 to Windows XP, it takes some getting used to, but for many users of Vista, it should be a pleasant change. For those running and happy with Windows XP, I really can’t tell people to upgrade yet. DirectX 10 features that are not supported on Windows XP would be the only reason to upgrade, which mostly pertains to gaming right now.
If you have a spare machine, or don’t mind possibly have to re-install your current OS in June, I’d recommend giving it a try.
–adam
