Ho and hum

PCMag.com has news which someone, somewhere, surely cares about:

Though it's been available for a week to subscribers of Microsoft's TechNet and MSDN programs, on Tuesday Microsoft made Windows 7 Release Candidate available for download to the general public. Users can head to Microsoft's Windows 7 page for a trial copy.
The Windows 7 RC will be available in English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. But only the Ultimate version of the OS is available for download, so the features and performance of the Starter, Home Premium, and Professional editions remain to be seen.
RC testers will be required to register, and will be given a product key for the period of evaluation. The RC evaluation software will expire in March 2010, with Windows Genuine Advantage kicking in to shut down the PC every 2 hours. A "This copy of Windows is not genuine" message will also be displayed. The same events will happen for users of the Windows 7 beta in July 2009. Microsoft has committed to issuing the final release to manufacturing of Windows 7 within three years of Vista's release, meaning it should arrive by the end of January 2010.
The Windows team urges testers not to upgrade directly from the beta of Windows 7, as the company wants to focus on the upgrade path from Vista and clean installs instead. There is a workaround, but that's more cumbersome than the clean install option.
The RC version is intended to harden and optimize features added and enhanced during the beta phase. For PCMag.com's take on what's new in the RC versus the beta, see our Hands-On with Windows 7 RC. Major differences include quicker, sleeker installation as well as more themes, a trimmed-down Control Panel, new networking drivers, and an updated version of Internet Explorer 8. New capabilities in the included Media Center have also been added.
A Windows XP emulation mode also debuts in this RC version, and PCMag has produced a detailed hands-on with this mode, which uses a new virtual machine into which users can install legacy applications.

Rico says he'll ignore all this and stick to his Mac, thank you very much...