14 DAY TRIAL // The second Release Candidate of the 64-bit version of Windows XP Professional was released as a free download. Microsoft will offer downloads of second Release Candidates of Windows Server 2003 x64 and Windows Server 2003 SP1.
All downloads have ben available as of Tuesday night, but only the Windows XP Professional x64 Edition RC2 code will be available to users in the framework of Microsoft's Customer Preview Program. You can enjoy the benefits of the release candidates for Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Windows Server 2003 x64 only if you are included in the technical beta program.
Along with these releases, users can expect a considerable improvement performance-wise accross a variety of workloads, as this is the real switch from 32-bit to 64-bit computing.
Microsoft said that it will begin accepting hardware device submissions for both Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions for the "Designed for Windows" logo program in the coming weeks. Both systems are planned to be available in "the first half of 2005".
The Windows XP Professional RC2 means a 450 MB download and is supported by AMD's line of 64-bit processors, meaning the Athlon 64 and Opteron. Intel recently incorporated 64-bit features of EM64T in its Xeons and Pentium 4 processors. Itanium-based systems are not supported.
System requirements call for 256 MByte memory, 1.5 GByte harddrive space. The RC2 is a time-limited version of the operating system and will run for 360 days, Microsoft said.
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Release Candidate 2 enhances security infrastructure by providing new security tools such as Security Configuration Wizard, which secures your server for role based operations, improved defense-in-depth with Data Execution Protection, and a safe and secure first boot scenario with Post-Setup Security Update Wizard.