Netbooks & Windows 7 Release Candidate
The Windows 7 RC is out, and you can try installing it on your netbook.
This might sound extreme – however a lot of people got the Windows 7 Beta working on netbooks, and the RC should be more stable and faster.
The most important link is the Windows 7 Release Candidate download page. This is where you can get a copy of the Windows 7 Release Candidate and try it out. There is no restrictions on number of keys though the download is only going to be available till end of July 2009.
You should also check out the Windows 7 Team Blog. They have constant updates on Windows 7 and interesting insights on Windows 7 features.
Do note the minimum requirements that are listed -
1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor 1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit) 16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit) DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
Although they list that a blank DVD and a DVD writer are needed, you can skip that entirely by using MagicISO which lets you mount your Windows 7 ISO as a virtual drive and then install from that drive. The page has instructions too.
I’ve installed it on a separate partition on my HP TouchSmart IQ506 and the entire process took just 35 minutes. Which gives me a partition with Windows 7 Beta, and another with Windows 7 Release Candidate 1.
Still using the Beta as all my programs are on it – However, will switch over to the RC in a couple of months. Its also interesting that the Release Candidate has a 1 year lifetime. Microsoft is pretty much giving everyone a one year pass.
My experience with the Windows 7 Beta over the last 4 months has been great – would highly recommend it. IE8 was a bit of a problem, especially since the newer version was unavailable to Windows 7 Beta machines. However, now that Windows 7 RC has the new version of IE8 things should be fine.
Do remember to backup your files before installing W7 RC and to not do it on your main machine. Windows 7 is going to be great with netbooks.
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