The Waiting is Over! Windows 7 is Here!

It was two days ago, October 22, 2009 Windows 7 has touched down the market after its official global launching! While this new operating system from Microsoft has been available for commercial costumers and developers since July, the final version is now available to the general public via new PCs preloaded with the OS and or retail purchase. 

The Journey
As far as I can remember, the journey of Windows 7 begun as early as 2008 during its first external release of the Milestone 1 (build 6519) in January 2008, then came the build 6801 distributed at the Professional Developers Conference 2008 (PDC).  On December 27, 2008 Windows 7 Beta was leaked via numerous torrent sites before the release of the official Beta release, people tested the leaked beta acknowledge the superiority of Windows 7 from its predecessors (XP and Vista).  On January 9, 2009 the Beta release has been made available to 2.5 million people who wants to see the new operating system.  As I remember, it took me two days to download the Beta due to the overwhelming traffic.  I was amazed with the new look and new interface of the Beta but a bit disappointed because my video card is not supported which is the cause of hanging and crashing of my PC. 

While MSDN and Technet subscribers are already enjoying Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) build 7100 as early as April 30, 2009, the official release of the of the RC to the general public was on May 5, 2009 dawning another period of evaluation.  The release candidate is available in five languages.  For those who are still enjoying the  release candidate like me, you must know that it will expire on June 1, 2010 , with shutdowns every two hours starting March 1, 2010,  please do a back-up of your files before the said dates and downgrade you operating system to much lower version of Windows unless you already acquired a copy of the final version of Windows 7.

On July 22, 2009 Windows 7 along with Windows Server 2008 R2 were released to manufacturing (RTM).  The said version is build 7600.16385 and was compiled on July 13, 2009 and was declared as the final RTM build after passing all internal tests done by Microsoft.
During the launch of Windows 7 on October 22, Amazon UK’s managing director Brian McBride claimed that Windows 7 is the biggest-grossing pre-order of all-time storming ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows!

That’s it folks, Windows 7 is here! It’s time for us to move-on with the newest Operating System in the planet!