I've been using the RC for a long time now. It's been great, very fast (faster than Vista, which honestly isn't nearly as bad as the Anti-Microsoft crowd make it out to be) and has a decent memory footprint (which Vista fails at - regardless of Superfetch - that's for those who will try to correct me). It's been solid, although there have been slight annoyances here and there in the UI that get on my nerves occasionally. Like why in the name of fuck did they remove the Libraries from the Start Menu??? One of the most useful features of Win 7 and they make it more annoying to access... seriously, someone needs a beating over that. But for the most part it's an improvement, an incremental improvement to be sure, but an improvement nevertheless.
I'm not sure of the reports of *HUGE* problems that people are having with the RC, I've not heard of these *HUGE* problems. I mean I've seen the usual slew of issues on the technet forums about Win 7, but a large number of those were Beta 2 issues.
You know, it's really funny how time colours our impressions. In a weird twist of fate I found some forum thread arguing about how XP was so successful and Vista was a monumental flop and I saw this quoted in a post. I hope it gives some perspective on the 'flop' that is Vista or back then, XP:
Oct 11, 2002: Windows XP Slow To Take Hold. On the first anniversary of Windows XP's release, Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) has little to celebrate.
Less than 10 percent of Microsoft's installed base has upgraded to Windows XP since its release last October. That matches a 2001 Gartner prediction that nearly 75 percent of all corporate PCs would still be running Windows 95, 98 or NT Workstation by the end of 2002.
The adoption rate for the installed base of 250 million Windows users is "pretty small," said Rogers Weed, vice president of Windows client product management at Microsoft. "We're trying to kick-start some momentum."
One solution provider said Windows XP hasn't had any impact on his sales over the past year. "I've not had a single client that wanted to upgrade from any previous version to XP, especially from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. There's just so little difference," said Jeffrey Sherman, president of Warever Computing, a Los Angeles-based solution provider specializing in networks.
It just sounds all too familiar....