Microsoft has made Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 available for download to the general public. However, the company has stated that, even with the broadening of the Customer Preview Program to additional users on top of the initial CPP participants, the program is still limited, and that access will be disallowed once the capacity will be reached.

Nick White, Microsoft Product Manager has revealed on the Windows Vista Team Blog that Microsoft has changed the Customer Preview Program status of the operating system. "Windows Vista RC1 is now publicly available. This means that 32- and 64-bit downloads for all three languages (English, German, and Japanese) are live. If you did not receive and email in the previous wave, you can now both download the ISO image and request a product key (PID)" wrote White.

The Redmond Company has made available for download two ISO files meant to be burned on a bootable DVD, prior to installation. Windows Release Candidate 1 32-bit edition has 3.0 gigabytes, while the 64-bit edition has 4.0 gigabytes.

Microsoft even comprised a list of the estimative download time taken into consideration the connection type and speed and the OS version. In this context, for the Vista 32-bit edition (3.0 GB), the Redmond Company has calculated that the shortest download time is 4.5 hours over a 3.0 mbps/Fast Cable/DSL connection. Additionally, speeds/connections of 1.5 mbps/T1, 768 kbps/Cable/DSL and 256 kbps/Cable/DSL will require 9, 18 and 54 hours respectively to complete the download. Microsoft has issued similar evaluations for Windows Vista 64-bit edition (4.0 GB). 3.0 mbps Fast Cable/DSL 5.5 hours, 1.5 mbps T1 10.5 hours, 768 kbps Cable/DSL 21 hours and 256 kbps Cable/DSL 64 hours.