I got the download finished at 14.50 off to install..

starting it now myself. I may or may not get it finished in the next 1.5 hours. If not, it'll be waiting for me tomorrow morning to burn to dvd and install.

Downloading from Technet also at the moment.

My downloading will be finished in 0.5 hours...    Good bye Vista forever!   

me.

 

I am not privileged enough to get Win7 from TechNet/MSDN, nor am I one of the handful who were invited into the closed beta. I'm still waiting on OEM copies from e-tailers... which I hope will be soon and prior to retail street date.

Any differences from the RC 7100 build?

Don't worry... You're not alone. Someone please make it very obvious when the OEM discs hit Newegg!

I would hope so...the RTM is 7600 [from memory]...

You mean you're getting a free copy of the OS Final RTM? Why don't I believe that? Maybe because M$ doesn't give anything away for free?

If it were ready, why wouldn't they put it on the market, or deliver it to those who prepaid/preordered?

You have to be a technet plus subscriber and that's a $349 yearly subscription.

Not sure who you are talking to.  People who are getting it today have Technical subscribtions with Microsoft.  It's RTM, which means it's currently in manufacturing for October release to the general public.

Yep, I understood that...I thought you were posting that this was free for technet subscribers. Actually it's far from free, and it's Technet Plus subscribers....those folks are IT Pros and the subscription is generally thru a business/Corp. They'd probably get a better deal from M$ anyway.

I can wait, but it's a good example of how not to market. The idea of a 'privileged some' rankles when one preordered. Not smart marketing, but it's part of their purchase contract of the subscription. I wonder if Apple does that?

Thanks for the news flash, though.

Well, the purpose of Technet is not primary to be 'privileged' but to give IT Pros a chance to test new software before migrating and for programming purposes. And this is download only, for now the 'real' thing still has steps like producing DVDs and cases to go through. So that will take some time I guess. And not to forget : The Technet/MSDN one is english only, no other languages available yet.

Releasing RTM software to TechNet and MSDN subscribers early has always been known. It's not marketing but rather a stage to prepare for the public retail release. Assume that MS made the OS available for purchase as soon as it hit RTM for a bit. Consider the consequences that bring of releasing an OS that is freshly finished with nearly no software to fully take advantage of the features the OS has. Sure some old software will work. But they are old, oudated, and may be using old API calls that isn't available any more. The reason why I say that I wasn't privileged to get it is because I do not have a subscription to either of the two. And getting one is very costly for an individual. I envy those who have access to a TechNet or MSDN subscription. They, as we all know, get all the goodies early, and legitimately too. The rest of us, the end users, are left sitting here drooling as they get to play with the new OS months before the general retail release. The fact that ID and many others at Stardock are getting this right now means that they have the RTM to work with as they finish up WB7 and make other apps fully compatible with Win7.