Final has been out for a couple of weeks now and you can install it without any serial and trial it for 30 days without activation. You can even rearm it for another 30 days several times when the first 30 days expires (Using a legitimate Microsoft command used by OEM's and retailers on demo PC's).

Grab it from any torrent tracker. Just make sure you verify the CRC matches the official ISO images that were released by MS if you wish to avoid any nasty malware.

I laughed out loud at the "Windows ME SP9" comment :P

I scoff at Windows 7 RC1. Us uni students are free to download the RTM at will. Academic alliance for the win!

This sounds like a sales pitch to get the few last cases of Bubonic plague before it's killed off forever.

not tried RC. downloaded the final ultimate from MSDN. so far nothing to jump through the roof about but also not to like. everything is pretty. seems like acceptable performance. logitec is behind on their G15 software.

Service pack 9? what?who are these new writers?

Dang. Regarding my earlier comment, it doesn't make much sense after Drashek's digital diarrhoea was mopped up. Ah well.

Win7RC64 is the first OS I have really liked and seen as a step forward. It behaves more intelligently, uses my resources (memory, SSDs and multicore processors) better than any OS I've tried yet (tried linux and windows variants and a few other smaller OSs). The UI is better than anything I've used (not talking about the appearance), expanding ability to interact by new useful keyboard commands, new GUI features, awesome voice recognition (better than stuff I paid good money for), and good tablet support. The boot and shutdown times are quicker than XP/vista on the same machine. I have only had one program work on XP but not windows 7 and that is Splinter Cell III/IV which is rather unintelligently designed by having its DRM written as an OS specific driver. My other programs: office, internet, 3d games, audio (I have a professional digital home studio), programming and development and anything else I've tried runs at least as well as on XP. Even as far as drivers, moving to 64-bit AND Windows 7 at the same time I didn't need to do any extra work finding drivers my components, old and new, were all picked up quicker than they would be on XP. And for the record - I thought Vista was garbage.

I disagree. I'm an MSDN subscriber and I upgraded just fine from RC1 to Ultimate. No warnings or anything, it just worked.

Damn - I only have a blue marker. My Enigma machine is still cranking away trying to translate the rest of the instructions.

^^ Funniest stuff I've read this week.