Microsoft makes Windows 7 RC1 availible for download.

news.zdnet.co.uk

13 points·ensignavenger··6 comments

If you do not have a TechNet/MSDN subscription and can't wait for May 5, try http://btjunkie.org/search?q=windows+7100

The first two results are the legit builds (both 32 and 64 bit). I tested with SHA1 against the signatures in TechNet and they are identical.

BTW, I do have my TechNet subscription, but I couldn't wait for today, so I downloaded those versions mentioned two days ago.

Finally, if you already have a beta key from the previous release, it should work with these ones.

Tried it in vmware earlier. I couldn't find a simple way to turn off font smoothing, only a 4 step wizard which kept repeatedly showing me text samples and asking which one looked best. Smoothed text makes me nauseous for some reason and I can't stand it.

Microsoft's implementation of font smoothing is really terrible. The way they use subpixels leads to a weird red/green halo on some letters.

Interestingly, font smoothing in OSX doesn't suffer from this problem.

Apple's implementation of font smoothing is really terrible. The way they emulate print rendering on-screen makes every letter blurry and unnecessarily bold.

Interestingly, font smoothing in Windows doesn't suffer from this problem.

That's true, but I find it much less of a problem than the colored halos.

It would be great if both companies cross-licensed their font smoothing technology to each other, and allowed users to choose which method they want on either OS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com