Download Windows 7 RC and keep it for a year, free

Not in a hurry to decide if Windows 7 is really all Microsoft says it is? Then this week’s public debut of Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 should be just the ticket.

Microsoft has set an exceptionally long use-by date on the software, which will run through until June 1st, 2010. So you can not only put Windows 7 through its paces on a day-by-day basis, you can do so for the next 421 days.

This means the release candidate will still be valid for some six months after the Windows 7 goes on sale, which it tipped for late October or early November 2009.

It’s all the more impressive because RC1 is a damned solid build, just as Beta 1 was better than we’ve experienced in any previous version of Windows. Indeed, for the first time in the history of Windows Microsoft moved straight fro Beta 1 to the Release Candidate stage without making the usual stop-overs at Beta 2 and sometimes Beta 3.

Microsoft is clearly wanting to give users plenty of ‘quality time’ with the new OS, perhaps with the hope that the longer they run Windows 7 for free the more likely they’ll be to stick with it – and pony up for money to buy a copy sometime after June next year.

In the meantime grab your copy of Windows 7 RC1 from this Wednesday (and be sure to stash a spare copy away for safekeeping) load it up on your desktop, notebook or netbook and take it for spin around the block.

Provided you can track down the relevant drivers we especially recommend Windows 7 for your netbook – it’s go the modern features of Vista but with the nimble light-footed nature of XP. It’ll also unlock the full potential of netbooks running Intel’s new GN40 graphics chipset, as these rely on 7’s inbuilt DirectX 10 and DXVA 2.0 (DirectX Video Acceleration 2.0) – technologies absent from Windows XP –  to deliver the enhanced graphics and hardware video decoding for improved HD video playback.