As previously announced, The Redmond Company has made Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 available for download via the Customer Preview Program. Microsoft has revealed that Vista RC1 can be downloaded via priority access and is available exclusively to current participants in the Customer Preview Program. Within the limits of approximately 5 million downloads, Microsoft has reiterated its promises to further broaden the CPP welcoming additional participant.

The 2.52 GB Windows Vista RC1, and the 3.59 GB English 32-Bit Edition and Windows Vista RC1, English 64-Bit Edition are available as ISO files, and need to be burned to a DVD prior to installation. "Windows Vista RC1 is available for participants of the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program. Please go to the Customer Preview Program website to register and receive a Product Key, which is required to install and activate the software. Before upgrading from Beta 2 to RC1, please install any Critical Updates from Windows Update for Beta 2," explained Microsoft.

Via a partnership with Akamai Technologies, the Redmond Company is also providing the Akamai Download Manager to deliver the two RC1 ISO files. "Akamai Download Manager lets you pause, resume, and stop the download of the file. It will also automatically restart the download if the process is temporarily interrupted. Due to the size of the download we strongly recommend you use the Akamai Download Manager," stated Microsoft.

The Redmond Company is also providing the signatures of the ISO files:
"32-Bit - MD5 hash: 22486e815a38feffd9667317dfeec55a
SHA1 hash: e00b4ebbc81fb420cf047973b95a9cfb7cdf51b7
64-Bit - MD5 hash: f3a385aae6e4dea9226e31d9f1148b56
SHA1 hash: 8e4de7a72c828a3543ff1663243eb0836da07eea."

Windows Vista RC1 is available for download here.