The "Official" RC download for Technet/MSDN

XGUNTHERC said:

so everything is all good on the RC. and its the same as the 7100 build.

awesome. when my new drive comes tomorrow. I'll give it a try and see what I think of it.

Well I can already tell you that you will like it!!!

Night Hawk said:

The official expiration date like I had suspected from seeing in the 7077s is still 6/1/2010. That was seen on the download page plus a few other places earlier when going over a few items available for the subscribers. I wouldn't worry about running into that one since the time was apparently extended from what they must have originally intended later to be pushed back to the 6/1 date.

Springboard Series - The Resource for Windows Desktop IT Professionals : Windows 7 RC is available for TechNet and MSDN subscribers to download

Some things to be aware of with the Windows 7 Release Candidate:

Please plan ahead for Windows 7 Beta and Windows 7 RC expiration dates. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to rebuild your test machine using a genuine version of Windows 7 before the software expires. Windows will remind you when the expiration process is beginning; two weeks after this notification your PC will begin shutting down every two hours.

Windows 7 Beta expires on August 1, 2009, and bi-hourly shutdowns will begin July 1, 2009.
Windows 7 RC will expire June 1, 2010, and the bi-hourly shutdowns will begin on March 1, 2010.

In both cases, you’ll need to rebuild your test PC to replace the operating system and reinstall all your programs and data.
Since Windows 7 RC is not the final release, your PC will gather and send information to Microsoft engineers to help them check the fixes and changes made based on testing of Windows 7 Beta.
Windows 7 RC requires that you do a clean install. Before installing Windows 7 RC, please read the Release Notes and Things to Know for important information.*

Hi all
Do the Beta keys still work or are there a set of new one's.

I'm (finally) happy with my current build of 7100 so don't know if I'll even bother with the "public one".

Running Windows update yesterday it updated automatically OFFICE 2007 to SP2 so looks like it will be as good as "official downlod".

Cheers
jimbo

There will be far more keys seen with the RC since they want more people involved in testing it.

Windows 7 RC Date Spied for May Release - Tom's Hardware

“The RC release will be available at least through June 2009 and we're not limiting the number of product keys, so you have plenty of time.”

Night Hawk said:

There will be far more keys seen with the RC since they want more people involved in testing it. Someone with a paid sunscription can tell you the actual number which will be quite a bit larger! Make sure to run some scans over the drive if you have a chance to plug it into another machine or boot off of another hard drive if you have one. Some clever bugs have been well hidden in some of the leaks.

maybe I'll download when it is available for public download and do a bit for bit comparison of the two iso's.

I doubt that any typical hacker could hide his / her work so well that both the hashes (CRC32, MD5, SHA1) AND the bit comparisons would agree 100% with the "Official download".

If they are THAT good I'm sure they would be working on "more productive and profitable" activities not necessarily legal either.

It's just that I've got my main machine running so nicely I really don't want to "undo and untangle" it all again.

Cheers
jimbo