If there's one thing to be learned from all the Windows 7 leaks, it's that users of Russian message boards mean what they say. Example: those same users posted just two days ago that an escrow build had been reached and that a torrent would likely be appearing on torrent trackers in a few days.

And appear it did, once again on Mininova, and it's been downloaded more than 15,000 times already. The build string doesn't match, but the Engineering 7 blog may have an explanation. In their blog post yesterday, they suggest bypassing the pre-release upgrade check by changing the MinClient build number from 7100 to 7000 if needed. That could very well mean that that build 7070 (the new leak) will simply be re-numbered as the RC.

The ISO is labeled 7077.0.090404-1255_x86fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRC1CULFRER_EN_DVD, a slight modification from the previously announced string (the forums had a B instead of RC). Screenshots have already appeared as well - and were first available here on this Russian site.

If this is legitimate (which it certainly seems to be at this point), then Micorosoft may well be on track to release the Windows 7 RC both internally and to key partners on April 10th as predicted. Public availability may well not come until May, though we still don't know for sure.

Way back in January I wrote about my corporate-sanctioned machine, complete with a few pieces of bloatware (sorry kids!). I appreciate the awesome suggestions, although since I need this thing for work purposes, I'm opting to go light and lean whenever possible to begin with. Yes, I realize Microsoft Office is the antithesis of "light and lean" but the suite is required to stay on the machine. For everything else, I want a small footprint.

Case in point: I needed a screenshot app. I chose MWSnap because it was small and unobtrusive, and didn't require an installation. It isn't perfect, but it does the job and I remember using it years ago. Unfortunately, my next series of application downloads wouldn't be so lean.

Note that a collection of applications says a lot about the primary user and what they will be doing day-to-day. A few months ago I ran a Twitter straw poll for TUAW and found a large portion of followers were web designers and developers, judging from the software they were using at that time. My use case is simple: I'm using this machine to test software for DownloadSquad, learn some programming, and take basic screenshots and possibly screen video. So far, I'm almost where I want to be with the base set of applications. To see what I've installed so far, keep reading.

Not that this should come as a huge shock to anybody, but Microsoft doesn't plan to make Windows 7 available in a one size fits all package. As we've previously reported, there's been evidence of multiple SKUs for a while. But now Microsoft has come out and confirmed that there will be 6 different versions of Windows 7.

Here's the rundown:

• Windows 7 Starter Edition - for netbooks and developing markets, only runs 3 apps at a time
  
• Windows 7 Home Basic - also for emerging markets
• Windows 7 Home Premium - this version gets you Windows Media Center and other home use features
• Windows 7 Professional - the equivalent of Windows Vista Business, with extra security features
• Windows 7 Enterprise - this version will be sold in volume licenses for businesses
• Windows 7 Ultimate - has most of the features of the Enterprise version, but will be sold to end users

Microsoft will probably charge a different price for each version. One thing that's interesting to note is that the Starter Edition is intended for netbooks, even though Windows 7 Ultimate beta has been widely reported to run just fine on low cost mini-laptops like the Asus Eee PC. The problem is that Microsoft can't ask computer makers to pay full price for an operating system that will be sold with a $300 laptop. So the company created an intentionally crippled Starter Edition which will sell for a lower price.

Update: As many people have pointed out in the comments, Windows has offered Starter Edition software to customers in developing nations in the past. But Windows 7 Starter Edition is different, in that Microsoft will be offering it in developed nations for the first time, specifically for manufacturers who are looking for a low cost operating system to load on netbooks.

Check out our complete coverage of Windows 7:
Windows 7 hands on - Impressive at every turn
Another Windows 7 secret revealed; desktop to have slideshows
Run Windows 7 on two computers with one install
Windows 7's Superbar in action - is it made for multitouch?
Windows 7 beta download extended

As Adam reported earlier, the Superbar has been unlocked in Windows 7. Apart from adding even more visual pop to the improved Desktop Window Manager, it adds some long-absent functionality.

Apart from better visual task tips with smooth transition effects, it's fixed another minor annoyance. At last you can click and drag taskbar buttons to re-order them. I've always been a little irritated by the fact that I couldn't do that in previous Windows versions, and was glad to see the change.

Grouped application windows will preview as pictured: hover the button, and the thumbnails expand into view. Hover a thumbnail and the red x appears, allowing you to close (duh) the program.

"Teach a man assembly, and he'll write device drivers for a day. Give a man a disassembler, and he'll figure out every secret hidden in the Windows 7 pre-beta."

I swear, I'm never going to get tired of posting about Rafael Rivera finding cool stuff hiding in the guts of our Microsoft products. He's done it yet again; this time, Rafael has uncovered another couple of Windows 7 shell goodies people have been asking to see for quite some time now. What's the latest discovery? Rafael is coining it "Desktop Slideshow;" it's a new setting hidden away in your Personalization settings that allows you to select multiple images to create a fading slideshow on your desktop.

"But wait," you're thinking, "I can a) do that on my Mac already and b) there are third-party utilities that let me do this on my Windows PC." That's true... but can your Mac or your third-party utilities automatically pull desktop wallpapers from an RSS feed? No? Well, Windows 7 can. Check out Rafael's blog Within Windows for more details, and a tool to let the masses check out the shiny new features once he's got the finer points worked out.

It obviously hasn't been a priority for Microsoft in the past, but it looks like another one of Windows' minor shortcomings has finally been addressed.

Yes, at long last your Microsoft OS will know what to do with an ISO file. While I'm sure none of us are going to forsake our favorite burning applications when and if we do switch to Windows 7, it's nice to see simple, useful features like this being implemented.

The process is so simple, even novice users will be able to burn an image with no trouble. Double-click an ISO, and Windows 7 opens a minimalistic dialog: choose a burner, select whether or not to verify your burn, and burn/cancel.

It works nicely, and it's definitely the kind of simple, functional addition that is making my test drive of Windows 7 an enjoyable one. Look for more Windows 7 updates as we get more time to play work with it!

Certified reverse engineer and rather impressive hacker (in the good sort of way) Rafael Rivera, of Uxtheme patching fame, announced on TWiT that he discovered our sneaky friends over in Redmond actually did enable that cool new "superbar" version of the taskbar in the version of Windows 7 that was handed out to guests at PDC (you know, that one that Lee showed off). The superbar was demoed during the various Windows 7 presentations, but the general consensus was that the feature hadn't been completed by the time the PDC handout build was prepared.

However, Rafael simply couldn't take no for an answer, and dug down into the innards of the pre-release version of Windows 7 to find that some rather sneaky developers at Microsoft simply rigged it to only appear for certain users with computers on Microsoft domains. Upon flipping a bit, he discovered that the superbar (albeit a slightly lesser version than demoed) could be enabled on the pre-beta build. He posted a very simple walkthrough guide and helper application for those of you that are graced with the PDC build of Windows 7, but still longing the shiny bits shown off by Steven Sinofsky at the Windows 7 keynote.

With the Microsoft PDC recently wrapping up, excitement has been building for Windows 7. I wonder, will it be able to live up to the hype? There's only one way to find out: install it and see for myself. This is by no means a complete analysis of the OS, rather my observations from the first few days of experimenting with it.

The Aero interface has been refined, and it's leaner and meaner than before. Visual effects look superb and are silky smooth, even on less powerful hardware like a Celeron M520 laptop with Intel integrated graphics. Even with all the Aero Glass effects enabled, battery life didn't take a substantial hit (I noticed anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes less on a 5.5 hour battery).

Need to move a full screen window? Just click the title bar and start dragging - no need to click restore first, it will automatically resize. The reverse works as well: drag a window to the top edge of your screen, and Windows will maximize it.

Keeping with the visual theme, display settings have returned to the desktop right-click context menu. The personalize option remains, but I was relieved to see that I once again had a quick access to the resolution adjustment.

You probably knew that a lot of dissatisfied WIndows Vista users had downgraded -- some might say "upgraded" -- to Windows XP. It was never clear exactly how many people took that step, but it was enough that Microsoft extended the shelf life for XP for a while. Now we have a number, thanks to a survey by Devil Mountain Software: nearly 35% of new Vista machines are being downgraded.

The survey used data from PCs that have been shipped in the last 6 months, and included machines that were downgraded by vendors before delivery or by users after the fact. The Register seems to think that Microsoft is shifting focus away from Vista, and instead increasing the marketing effort for its next major OS release, Windows 7. I hardly think these numbers spell doom for Microsoft, but they hopefully provide some incentive to look at why customers are ditching Vista and address their concerns.

A bit more than a year after going gold, Microsoft is already assessing and discussing some lessons learned from Vista's underwhelming debut. ZDNet quotes Microsoft VP Mike Nash about the problems associated with the Vista launch and steps the company plans to take to prevent those kind of problems in the future.

The two main problems Microsoft seems set on avoiding with the next version of Windows, dubbed Windows 7, are fewer architectural changes to Windows itself and more realistic release schedule.

The amount of significant changes to the core OS were blamed for many of Vista's delays, as well as many of the compatibility problems with existing products. While Microsoft doesn't regret making these changes to Vista (well, so they say), they are not making changes on that scale with Windows 7. When it comes to addressing release issues, Microsoft has made the decision to be less transparent about release schedules, only making information available when the date is actually feasible. Right now, Microsoft is aiming to launch Windows 7 sometime in 2010 (or 2011 or 2012...this is still Microsoft).

This week, as we do every week, we spent most of our waking moments following all those tiny hamsters which keep the Internet humming along.

Here's the best of what we saw this week.



Twine: a social network built on the semantic web

The semantic web is one way we might give search engines a little more intelligence about the things for which we're searching. Our own Brad Linder caught up with Nova Spivack, the CEO and Founder of Radar Networks, one of the companies pioneering the Semantic Web.

Adobe: In 10 years, all our apps will be online

It's no surprise that simple, everyday applications have picked themselves up and moved from our hard drives to the Internet. While word-processing, editing spreadsheets, and some minor image editing makes sense in a browser based world, we were shocked to hear Adobe say that in ten years, all their apps will be online. Photoshop, maybe. Premiere? We'd like to see that.

Dr. Shutleworth or; How I learned to stop worrying and love Open Source

We're openly predicting that Ubuntu 7.10, released Thursday, will be the tipping point for Linux on the desktop. Could it be true?

Mark Shuttleworth talks Ubuntu 7.10

Speaking of Mark Shuttleworth, Download Squad attended a virtual press conference with none other than the space traveling, Linux advocate himself. Find out what Shuttleworth had to say about the launch of Ubuntu 7.10

Dept of obvious research: Girls with photos online get more messages

We were less than shocked to learn; Girls who post photos online are more likely to be contacted by interested strangers than boys, or girls who don't post pictures. The Pew Internet & American Life studies group spent actual money to settle this long debated question once and for all. We'd have never guessed.

Other popular articles this week:

A Tiny peek at Windows 7
RIAA sues Usenet. Wait, you can do that?
Office 2008 for Mac; The first screenshots

If you're like most Windows XP users, you're perfectly willing to wait for Windows Vista Service Pack 13 to be released before upgrading. Well, there's good news. If you can hold out for three more years, you can skip over Vista entirely and get the next version of Microsoft's operating system, which the company is internally referring to as "Windows 7."

The announcement came at a sales force conference in Orlando this week. Microsoft plans to get back to releasing Windows upgrades on a regular schedule. Windows Vista was released more than five years after the last operating system, Windows XP.

But we kind of knew all that. So the only real news to come out of this sales force meeting is that Windows is no longer using the codename "Vienna" for the next operating system. The nomenclature behind "Windows 7" is a bit unclear though. The way we see it, the new OS should be called Windows 11. Or if you take out NT, Windows 10. Perhaps OS 10?

1. Windows 1.0
2. Windows 2.0/2.1
3. Windows 3.0/3.1
4. Windows 95
5. Windows 98
6. Windows ME
   
7. Windows NT
8. Windows 2000
9. Windows XP
10. Windows Vista
11. Windows 7

Okay, so Microsoft's probably pretending that Windows 1 - 3.11 and NT don't count. But the company's got three years to come up with a snappier name than "Windows 7." Best get started soon.
[via Engadget]