Microsoft has announced that the Release Candidate version of Windows 7 will be available to the public as a free download on May 5. And since the RC version seems to be pretty much finished (I have not tried it), then it’s essentially giving it away for more than a year: as mentioned earlier, it won’t expire until 1 June next year.
RC includes a couple of new features, mainly Remote Media Streaming (so you can stream stuff from your home PC to your work PC, for example), and in pro versions, Windows XP Mode (below).
The slight drawback is that if or when you want to buy the final version, it’s not designed to install over the beta RC. Microsoft is only testing the normal use case, which is an upgrade from a previous version of Windows.
I would not recommend using it as a main OS if reinstalling Windows 7 from scratch later is something you’d like to avoid. However, installing Windows 7 on a test computer, or one you don’t mind reinstalling later, for the purpose of kicking the tires sounds great.
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