Windows 7 is here–sort of. Yes, Microsoft still isn’t talking about when it’ll ship the final version–all evidence suggests it’ll be sometime this Fall–but the company is unleashing the Windows 7 Release Candidate today. It’s a free, all-but-final version of the operating system, and it’ll work until March 1st, 2010 before Microsoft forces you to uninstall it or overwrite it with a paid-for copy of the final edition. In short, if you’re itching to give Windows 7 a try, you can.

I’ve been using Windows 7 in various prerelease incarnations since last October, and for the more part, I’ve liked what I’ve seen. (So did most of the Technologizer community members who took our survey on the beta.) For the past few days I’ve been running the Release Candidate–mostly on an Asus EeePC 1000HE, and to a lesser extent on a Dell XPS M1330 laptop. (Full disclosure: The latter machine was loaned to me by Microsoft for Windows 7 testing.)

I’ll be writing about this beta a lot in the coming months–right up until the time that I get my hands on a version of W7 that’s even closer to being ready to roll. After the jump, some questions and answers about the Release Candidate and Windows 7 in general.
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It’s not all that often that the words “Windows” and “ahead of schedule” can be used in the same sentence, but here we go: As Cnet’s Ina Fried is reporting, Microsoft. which said it was going to make the Windows 7 Release Candidate available for download tomorrow, opened up the floodgates tonight, ahead of schedule. Here’s the download page. I’ll be posting a detailed guide soon, but here’s the short story: I’ve been using the Release Candidate for a few days and it’s gone–well, not perfectly, but really well. Even though Windows 7′s final version isn’t due for months, I hope and expect that the Release Candidate is the version of Windows I’ll turn to most often from here on out.

If you’re intrigued enough by the Release Candidate to consider trying it, I say go for it–as long as you can install it in its own partition, rather than overwriting a working copy of Windows Vista. (Unless you’re really anxious, though, waiting a day or two’s not a bad idea, given Microsoft’s history of struggling to keep up with the initial throngs of crazed downloaders.)

If you spend time with the RC, please let us know what you think. And stay tuned for more thoughts from me.

Wasting no time, Microsoft appears set to stop sales of Vista as soon as Windows 7 ships.  Official support from the company would be provided through April 2012, however.

This would be a change from the last OS revision, where XP was sold long after Vista’s 2006 debut.

In a somewhat cryptic statement, Microsoft General Manager Richard Francis wrote in an internal e-mail that he was “not sure” if computer makers would be able to ship Vista after Win 7′s launch, PC World reports. That doesn’t make much sense, since Microsoft is in control of the OS reaching its manufacturers.

I might be reading too much into it, but it sounds to me like Microsoft is trying to carefully word a quick exit from Vista, without actually saying its dumping the OS. Everybody knows that in terms of success, Vista was just about as popular as Windows ME (we all know how well that one went over).

Add to this the fact that XP will continue to live on in netbooks until at least 2010, and it seems to further my supposition.

When Microsoft set a release schedule for the Windows 7 Release Candidate–which will apparently be the last major version before it finalizes the OS–it said that members of its TechNet service for IT types would get it on April 30th, and everyone else would have to wait until May 5th. If that was to ensure trouble-free downloads for everyone involved, it didn’t work: As Ed Bott reports, a database glitch prevented a lot of TechNet members from getting the download.

I had trouble myself, at first–but now, the download seems to be proceeding properly. I plan to install the RC on both a general-purpose notebook and a netbook, and look forward to sharing impressions. And if you snag the RC–either right now or at any time between now and general release–I’d love to know what you think.