I've just ordered a new mobo, cpu and RAM, as my ageing machine was just playing up too much. I have also pre-ordered Windows 7, thinking, "That's fine, I'll just download the Release Candidate people were talking about, and then put on the full thing later." It seems I can't do that, because MS has stopped the downloads, which is fine and their perogative, but is there any other place to get it from? Is it permissible for people who did download the RC or RTM to share their download, and if so can anyone help me please?I'm trying to avoid the pain of installing XP again now, and then redoing the whole thing in October.Cheers,Mark

I've just ordered a new mobo, cpu and RAM, as my ageing machine was just playing up too much. I have also pre-ordered Windows 7, thinking, "That's fine, I'll just download the Release Candidate people were talking about, and then put on the full thing later." It seems I can't do that, because MS has stopped the downloads, which is fine and their perogative, but is there any other place to get it from? Is it permissible for people who did download the RC or RTM to share their download, and if so can anyone help me please?I'm trying to avoid the pain of installing XP again now, and then redoing the whole thing in October.Cheers,Mark

Mark, had you still been able to download the W7 beta or RC, you would still have needed to do a clean install of Win 7 RTM as, according to Microsoft, upgrade installs are not "allowed" - so just do a clean one. Not much difference really in going forward from most versions of Vista or XP .......... I also very highly doubt it's "permissible" for someone to "share" their download of an RTM version of an OS. Sorry for your "pain", but I can't quite understand your public plea.

Kendall, thanks for your help, but I'm not sure what is confusing about my original post. I was publicly asking the question about sharing of the downloads because I wanted to know whether it was allowed or not, not because I was hinting at piracy. I suspected that the RTM would be a no go, but I wondered whether the RC, which had been publically available, would be ok. I had no sinister motive.

Is this LINK any use? Hope so....Cheers - David/Dai (EGFE). :(

Interesting, thanks for posting it David.

Bingo - that's the link you want.I'm running that very Springboard release right now as I await my preordered upgrade to be "released" in October with the rest of them.Yes, I'll need to do a 100% reinstall when my 90 day timer runs out, but that's a small price to pay in order to get a feel for the system and enjoy all its benefits. Mark - that is the link you want to use! (Note that you will have a small watermark hovering in the far lower right corner of the screen indicating it is an evaluation edition, but it is easy enough to just ignore while you use the free software for 3 months!) -Greg