With the release candidate of Windows 7 now available for general download and with a rumoured release date of October 23rd I thought now was a good time to start checking it out.

Now without wanting to trash a perfectly good Windows XP machine to do it, I thought I’d see if I could get the RC up and running on VMWare Fusion on one of my Macs. That way nothing gets trashed.

Then as I was downloading the RC I came across a blog post on the VMWare site with guidance on exactly how to get it up and running. Sweet.

A quick read, half a dozen clicks and bosh – ten minutes later and it was up and running like a dream.

I have to say, after the shambles they’ve made out of Vista, the first impressions are good. Even under virtualisation it runs smoothly and quickly.

Only time will tell how it holds up under serious testing, but Microsoft could finally have the XP killer they’ve been so desperately after.