14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 7 RC's public availability might have slowed Microsoft down a tad when it comes to the development process of the next iteration of Windows 7, but the Redmond company has rapidly gained back any lost momentum. In this context, Windows 7 Build 7127 is already live. Build 7127 is post-Release Candidate, namely from the RTM-branch of the operating system.
Microsoft has already confirmed officially that there will be no additional development milestone between the RC and RTM. There will be, however, interim builds, as the company will focus on preparing the platform for general availability. Jon DeVaan, senior vice president, Windows Core Operating System Division, and Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, explained at the start of this week that RC downloads were the starting point on the road to RTM.
“The RC is ‘done’ and what we are doing is validating this against the breadth of the ecosystem and with partners. It means, from our perspective, we have run many tests many times and are working to understand the quality of the release in a breadth sense. We’re all familiar with this as we have done this same thing as we went from pre-Beta to Beta and from Beta to RC. The primary difference with the RC is that we will not be changing the functionality or features of the product at this point—that’s the sort of thing we’ll save for a future release,” DeVaan and Sinofsky stated.
Not only is Windows 7 Build 7127 live, but the first screenshots are already available in the wild, courtesy of PCBeta. The full build number of the release is 7127.0.090507.1820, indicating that the bits were compiled on May 7, 2009. The downloads are up for grabs from Microsoft Connect, but, of course, the access is limited and by invitation only. The download packages are dubbed 7127.0.090507-1820_x86fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULFRER_EN_DVD.iso for the 32-bit and 7127.0.090507-1820_x64fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULXFRER_EN_DVD.iso for the 64-bit flavor.
“We’ve gotten tons of feedback on design and features and shown how we have digested and acted on this feedback. We know we did not do everything that was asked, and we have also seen that we’ve been asked to do things that are tricky to reconcile. We hoped through the dialog [with you] that we’ve shown our commitment to listening and balancing a wide variety of inputs, and how we have thought about the evolution of Windows,” DeVaan and Sinofsky added.
32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 (Release Candidate) RC Build 7100.0.090421-1700 is available for download here.
