Get Your Copy of Windows 7 RC1

Microsoft has made the release candidate of Windows 7, the next version of its desktop operating system, available as a free download. The download has been active since the earliest hours of Tuesday, May 5.

This marks the second time Microsoft has made a copy of Windows 7 available as a free preview. In January, the company offered up Windows 7 Beta 1 to testers, and the crushing server load brought on by thousands of users eager to get their hands on the beta release earlier this year resulted in a chaotic and messy release.

Microsoft is better prepared this time around, but even if the downloads go smoothly, there are a few things you need to know before making the leap.

What You'll Need

• A Windows Live ID, free from Microsoft at live.com
• A broadband internet connection
• A DVD burner and a blank DVD (If you're upgrading from Vista, you can skip burning a DVD)
• A dedicated computer that meets these hardware requirements:
• 1GHz or faster 32-bit or 64-bit processor
• 1 GB of RAM for the 32-bit version, or 2 GB of RAM for the 64-bit version
• 16 GB of available disk space (32-bit), 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics support with Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 or higher
• Patience! Demand will be huge, so downloading may take a while.

How to Proceed

Step 1. Go to Microsoft's official site to get the Release Candidate.
Step 2. Log in using your Live.com account and request the proper download (32-bit or 64-bit).
Step 3. Start the download -- it may be a bit slow-going or require a few tries.
Step 4. You should receive a product key along with your download.
Step 5. Once the download is finished, you'll have an ISO file on your computer. If you are preforming a clean istallation, you'll need to burn this onto a blank DVD before you can install Windows 7. ISO Recorder is an excellent free program you can use to do this.
If you are upgrading from Vista, you can instead copy the contents of the ISO file to a folder on your hard drive and run the setup from there. You can use the free and open-source 7zip to copy everything from the ISO file to a folder on your hard drive, then just run the setup.exe file.