Windows 7

I've pre-ordered a copy of Windows 7 from Amazon. Though it's not due for release until October, the £40 odd asking price was too tempting.

I've also taken the plunge and have downloaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) of the OS - basically this is the "just about final" version of the code.

Reports have been good on stability, speed and general features, so I thought I'd give it a try. It works until June or July next year, though from March 10 it re-boots every 2 hours. I'll have my official copy up and running my then anyway, so it won't matter.

I'm installing the RC on a partition on my XP machine, the lesser specced of my 2 PC', which is frankly getting a bit tired now.

One of the benefits of Win 7 apparently is that you actually need a less powerful machine to run it on that you did for Vista, so older machines like my XP box could quite possibly get a new lease of life.

We'll see, and I'll keep you posted.