Are you one of those early birds who installed the then free available Windows 7 Release Candidate? Fun is over. Beginning March 1, the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) will start to shut down every two hours in preparation for its expiration on June 1, 2010. That means you will need to migrate your RC systems to an official version of Windows 7. Another option is to go back to yuor your previous operating system. But who’s willing to do that?

Most of us will remember a rather dramatic introduction of Windows Vista several years ago. With a lot of marketing power users were forced to switch to a not very well performing new operating system. There were many complaints about the big amount of bugs and the poor performance. Microsoft seemed to ignore the complaints, but after a while they had to conclude Windows Vista was not the right way to go. Quite soon after the Vista introduction it became clear Microsoft was aiming to launch a new OS. Windows 7 should make us forget about the Vista debacle and should be able to compete with the very user friendly Apple OSX. New data shows Microsoft has learned from the past mistakes.

Windows 7 was released less than a month ago and it’s being adopted rather quickly. According to w3schools.com in October it already had a market share of 4,4%. Knowing Mac’s OSX has a share of 6,8% we could say this is pretty impressive. Given the speed at which the percentage is climbing, Windows 7 should pass the install base of OSX sometime in the next two months.

Since the emergence of Microsoft Windows up to the Windows XP the users have been provided with backward compatibility features. Personally I think that this is one of the main reasons why Microsoft Windows is still on the market. It is because Windows never forced you to change all software in your computer to be able to work. Of course you can find several exceptions to  this, but in general, especially on Windows XP, we can run plenty of old applications. Supporting old software creates a very big overload on the operating system because it has to port old libraries keeping new ones as well. So how Microsoft plans to keep it for next decade?

On Thursday, October 22, Microsoft will launch its new next-generation operating system. From that moment it will be available worldwide. Last Saturday already 777 people in the village Zevenhuizen (7 houses) in The Netherlands could get the new OS installed. Microsoft is really pushing Windows 7. They claim Windows 7 will finally fill the gap between them and Apple. And that’s something they didn’t manage with Windows Vista, probably the worst market introduction by Windows ever. Will Windows 7 provide what we are looking for?