Windows 7 to goes straight to Release Candidate
 

The head of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows development confirmed that Windows 7 will take the unusual path of moving straight from a single beta, which was launched earlier this month, to a release candidate. Sinofsky fleshed out the plan today and hinted that just as there would be no Beta 2, the company would also not provide a RC2 build. In other words, there may be only one released build of Windows 7 before it ships, possibly much sooner than even some of the most aggressive rumors about Windows 7. How much different can Windows 7 really be with such a shortened beta cycle?

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?.../01/31/1440252

Heh, they are ripping it apart. Calling Windows 7 a service pack just shows the person's ignorance of where the code base originated.

I would have preferred at least a second RC, but Windows 7 does seem to be in good shape. Even gaming with the included graphics drivers just works, something Vista didn't have for ~6 months after it went live.

the way I see it, the less time MS gets to mess things up the better

I think quite the opposite. Betas and RCs are released to find and fix bugs before the final release of a product. Shortening the test phase duration this dramaticaly also eliminates the chance to find problems in advance.

However, at this stage, Windows 7 is much better compared to Vista B1. Maybe they're lucky this time :)

There was a time in the Beta of Vista where it was the new hotness too, but then MS had too much time with it and it ended up what we know as Vista now.

afaik Vista was never the new hotness, ever since the first beta it has been criticized; and when the final release came around, all those who used the beta and/or read about, stayed away from Vista;

I agree with jmke, Vista beta wasn't good at all, the ones that like Vista didn't look beyond the new, fancy dress it was wearing and forgot that a big, fat, ugly monster was wearing this dress.

I enjoyed the Vista betas, I had less problems with those then I did the RTM version of Vista. What people don't realize is MS changed more than a few things in the RTM build that broke various things, one of which happened to be Intel's RAID controller software. It worked fine in the betas and RC builds, but not the final RTM build due to the last minute change.

Either way, anyone that was following the news knows Windows 7 is set to launch anytime from this summer to this fall... they wouldn't have time to do multiple betas and multiple release candidates if this was the case. W7 beta already feels like a polished RC build and is definitely further ahead than Vista RC1 ever was...

I haven't been following the numbers lately, but couldn't it also be because the Vista sales are slowing down, partialy because of the W7B1 release ?
I wouldn't buy Vista anymore now that I know W7 is on the way (not that I once considered buying it), I'd even be happy to use the beta untill the RTM is released (or until the beta version doesn't work anymore, but I suppose there will be ways to keep it going a bit longer ^^)

Vista sales were never exactly strong. Microsoft missed its projected sales forecasts for Vista and ever since has never mentioned anything or issued a press release bragging about how many they've sold (that I know of, I could be wrong).

Microsoft always wanted to keep to a ~ 2 year quick turnaround timetable for OS's. Windows 2000 launched in 2000... XP launched in October 2001.

Of course it missed it's projected sales forecasts, everyone saw the coming, but that doesn't mean sales can't get even worse than they already are :D