The Windows 7 release date varies greatly. I heard as soon as August 2009, but MS is known for delaying OS releases. If you want the best performance for video and picture editing always consider a quality $120+ motherboard, $250+ CPU, 850 Watt PS, and as you said 8GB of RAM. A couple of 500GB hard drives wouldn't hurt either

Well at the time I build the current system it had the fastest quad processor available, an MB 850 w supply 2x10,000 rpm 80G drives & 4x1TB 7,500 rpm drives plus dual ATI radeon saphire and twin high end monitors. My understanding is that win XP 64 bit was not written, from the ground up, to take full advantage of 64bit. In turn SW developers did not feel that the circumstances would justify heavy investment in trying to maximise 64bit performance because the OS limitations would get in the way.

I now hear that manufacturers and developers are feeling more enthusiastic about Win 7's potential and I sure as hell need some improvements in the processing department.

It will be interesting to see what happens with 7

I was very surprized about how smoothly the dual boot Vista Home Premium, SP1 and Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit worked. After experiencing Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, Windows 95 to Windows 98, Windows 98/ Windows Me to Windows XP, and Windows XP to Windows Vista, I am very optomistic about Windows 7

I agree with you... Windows 7 even on beta is wow, superbly stable, fast and user friendly, but I would like to know when the Windows 7 Release Candidate will be out?

Our sister site Neowin says April 10th.

Is a Release Candidate different from a beta release?

Yep. Different.

Thanks SNGX1275 for the info. Now just have to wait for about 3 to 4 weeks to download the RC.

Yes different. The Release Candidate is the nearest one to the Final Version, so if you download the RC then you won't find too much changes in the final one.

Very cool! If the Beta runs so well, RC1 should be even better...

Definitely Yes... That why i'm impatient to get the RC.

Can't wait for the RC release

So what, now I gotta DL a whole other copy or can I just update from the 64bit beta? It runs so good on my machine I don't want to screw it up now.

Read this guide: Dual Boot Windows 7 with XP/Vista in three easy steps

I already have XP and 7 installed on this computer... triple booting with another version of 7 seems kinda dumb to me. Is that what you are telling me to do?

Yes.

So obviously I didn't understand your question:
[COLOR="DimGray"]
"So what, now I gotta DL a whole other copy or can I just update from the 64bit beta?[/COLOR]"

Are you asking to go from 32Bit to 64Bit? That would require a whole new Partition
Maybe you could clear up what you need support on?

I already have the Windows 7 (64-bit) beta dual booted with XP. My question is when RC1 is released, will I have to download that and wipe out the existing beta to have the newer version of the OS, or will it automatically update itself? That would be a pain to install the whole thing all over; like I said, it works great so I don't want to mess it up.

Oh

Sorry they won't update (Beta or RC)

The only one that will update will be the real version (and only when an update happens to that like Windows 7 SP1 )

Well I guess I'll pass on downloading it then because I don't really use 7 all that much right now anyways. I really only use it just to screw around and try to get things to run but I don't really have any programs that I can't just install on XP. I guess that kinda defeats the purpose of having a beta installed but whatever, makes me look forward to the real version. I will think about it actually, because all of you are claiming it's going to be so great; who knows when they release the final version...

Thanks on the link mate. I didn't see it

Recently updated my free version of AVG from 8.0 to 8.5 on Windows 7 x64 and all hell broke loose! During the uninstall of 8.0 I got my first blue screen - upon reboot it would BSOD after a couple minutes of logging into the machine. I completed the 8.5 install anyway and it still continued to crash with a tdx.sys fault.

I ended up uninstalling 8.5 from my machine and then re-installing the NIC drivers and so far all is well again. Just posting this in case someone else is experiencing it.