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Applying the same set of criteria, any builds superseding 7100 are from the RTM branch. The first one offered to third-party testers outside of Redmond via Microsoft Connect is Build 7127, a release leaked and made available for download in the wild. From RC, Windows 7 will evolve straight to RTM, the software giant has confirmed.

“We shipped a release candidate, we've had over 1 million downloads, we can get a very good sense of whether we have made as much progress in the product, it looks as good out there as it does in our labs, and I'm pleased to announce right now that we're going for holiday, and we're tracking very, very well for it,” Bill Veghte, senior vice president for Windows business at Tech•Ed 2009, stated on May 11, 2009. “If you're waiting for Windows 7, holiday broad availability, that's what we're tracking for. Obviously, quality is job number one, and we will hold if we think we have quality issues. But we're tracking very, very well to holiday.”

Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, and Jon DeVaan, senior vice president, Windows Core Operating System Division, indicated that Microsoft viewed RTM not as a point in time, but rather as a process. As Widows 7 will be released to manufacturing, the operating system will ship to PC manufacturers and will be preloaded on new machines, boxed copies will be produced for retail, and, generally, get the supply chain ready to start serving the operating system to the public. Only after the entire supply ecosystem is aligned post-RTM will the Windows 7 bits become generally available (GA).



Windows 7 Build 7127

Windows 7 Build 7127 is one of the interim development milestones of the next iteration of Windows, and, in this sense, a step on the way to RTM. There will undoubtedly be some testers that won't be able to stick to Windows 7 Build 7100 with Build 7127 available. But, fact is that the latest snapshot of Windows Vista's successor will not satisfy the hunger to see more from Windows 7. It simply won't.

And going forward, any changes, as minor as they will be, are bound to focus under-the-hood of the operating system. Microsoft is perfecting Windows 7 for general availability (GA) and is doing nothing more than to soften the rough corners of the platform. The RTM and GA milestones are ultimately dependent on quality as the main factor. Just an example of Microsoft working to avoid repeating the mistakes done with Windows Vista. One illustrative example in this regard is the effort poured into ensuring software and hardware compatibility with Windows 7.



“At the release candidate, we had over 10,000 commercial companies – this is hardware and software – 10,000 companies participating and developing on Windows 7 and committing their support – 10,000. Just to put 10,000, that's a number that you generally would see at general availability of the OS or on a really good cycle at Released to Manufacturing. We have 10,000 at the release candidate,” Anderson shared.

32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 (Release Candidate) RC Build 7100.0.090421-1700 is available for download here.