On May 5th, general users will have access to an entire year of Microsoft’s brand new operating system, Windows 7, for free It is already available to download for MSDN and TechNet subscribers. This version is only the Release Candidate and will expire June 1, 2010. The Release Candidate is merely the near finished product and is basically the final stage in testing. It’s supposed to have all the features of the final version. We don’t know when the final version will be released but rumors say it’ll be either late 2009 or early 2010.

A beta version of Windows 7 was released some time ago, and from using it for a short time, I can gather that it was much faster and more friendly than Windows Vista. Indeed for those of you who hated Vista, Windows 7 is Vista done right. Windows 7 boasts a lot of new features including a new taskbar, libraries, jump lists, etc. Windows 7 will also come packaged with the newest Internet Explorer IE8.

via Microsoft to give away free Windows 7 for a year | mndaily.com – Serving the University of Minnesota Since 1900.