Now that Windows Vista SP1 has been out for a few months, there's no particularly good reason that you should be running an early release candidate of the service pack. But if you're too lazy to have uninstalled it, you've got about two weeks before Microsoft forces you to do so.

Starting June 30th, any machines running a release candidate of Windows Vista SP1 will only be able to run for about an hour at a time. Basically, you boot your system, it runs normally for an hour, and then the kernel shuts down and you get a message that says END_OF_NT_EVALUATION_PERIOD. At least it's fairly easy to understand.

But wait! Didn't Microsoft push Windows Vista SP1 final out through automatic updates? Well, yes, it did. But you can only install Windows SP1 if you've first rolled back any release candidates of the service pack. So if you haven't done that yet, there's no time like the present.

[via Flexbeta]

Opera has launched a release candidate of Opera 9.5, the latest version of the company's web browser. Opera 9.5 has been in beta for several months, but the release candidate is a bit more stable, sports a few new features, and more importantly, a bunch of bug fixes. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Features a previously mentioned new skin
• Smoother upgrade from Opera 9.2 to 9.5
• "Download message bodies" enabled on all POP accounts
• Stability fixes
• Improvements to the Mac native skin and fixed support for Mac OS X 10.2

Unless major issues with Opera 9.5 RC are found, this version could eventually be marked a stable release. If you haven't tried Opera in a while, it's worth taking for a spin. While there are still a handful of sites and web services that don't render properly in Opera, (Google, we're looking at you), overall the browser is incredibly fast and full featured.

Mozilla has pushed out the first release candidate for Firefox 3. That means this version should be more stable than any of the betas that have been released over the last year, but there may still be some bugs to work out. If you want to be absolutely certain you won't lose settings or mess up your system somehow, you might want to hold off on downloading Firefox 3 until a final build is released. That said, we've been playing with early builds of Firefox 3 for months, and it's way faster than Firefox 2 and includes some nifty new features like improved bookmark management and a more useful location bar.

Firefox 3 RC1 looks and feels a lot like Firefox 3 beta 5, but there are a few changes:

• Changes to the JavaScript engine and optimizations for web applications like Gmail and Zoho Office
• Improvements to the user interface
• Changes and fixes for bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and location bar autocomplete
• Security improvements

You can check out the complete list of changes in the release notes, or you can just go ahead and download the release candidate. Firefox 3 is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows.

Microsoft has released an updated release candidate of Windows Vista SP1 to about 15,000 beta testers. It's not entirely clear at the moment what changes are included in this update, but the release does show that we can expect at least a few more tweaks before Microsoft releases the final version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

Microsoft pushed out a public release candidate of SP1 last month. Unfortunately downloading and installing that version does not make you a member of Microsoft's inner circle, which means that you won't necessarily be able to download the new version through Windows Update or from Microsoft's password-protected download page.

On the other hand, some members of the Neowin forum have posted what may be a direct download link. This probably goes without saying, but download at your own risk.

[via gHacks]

As expected, Microsoft has made the release candidate of Windows Vista SP1 available to the general public. There are several ways to get grab the update. You can download a registry key that will allow you to install SP1 through Windows Update. Or you can just download a standalone installer. Depending on your needs, that file will be between 436MB and 878MB. (There are four versions of the standalone installer, two for x86 systems, and two for x64 systems).

You're probably better off going through Windows Update, as Vista will just install the packages that you need. But you may have to check for updates and reboot several times before you actually get SP1.

We're still test driving our copy of Vista SP1 RC, but we've been hearing so much about this update over the last few months that we almost feel like the magic wore off before it was even released. While there are a ton of bug fixes, reliability, and compatibility enhancements in Windows Vista SP1, users shouldn't expect a major performance boost.

Bear in mind, this is a release candidate, not a final release. That means Microsoft could still make some changes before pushing Service Pack 1 out to all customers early next year. It also means that if you don't want to be a glorified beta tester (we know, a release candidate is more stable than a beta, but no one ever talks about "release candidate testers") you might want to hold off on downloading SP1 RC. For a little while at least.