Microsoft has now released Windows 7 SP1 and Windows server 2008 R2 SP1 after the RC escrow and the full RC builds were leaked earlier in this month. It will be available to testers through Technet. You can access the bits through earlier registration or if you do not want, you can skip the registration process and can grab the SP1 RC from the Microsoft Download Center. Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc told reports that “We are releasing the Release Candidate (RC) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to the public,”.
He also told that “This RC signals the last public beta build to be released prior to the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) final release. As previously announced, the only new features added to the SP1 are the Windows Server 2008 R2-related virtualization technologies, Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX.”

So it is very clear that now customer should stop hunting for new features in service pack 1 for Windows 7 client because there are none. Windows 7 is a collection of hotfixes, security updates, optimizations, etc. but if you are an end user there is no feature or capabilities for you.

If you are using Windows server 2008 R2 then you are lucky because you get Dynamic memory and RemoteFX. But apart from these two features, they do not get ant thing else.

However it is still unclear about the possible release date and Mirosoft is not talking much on Windows 7 SP1. Company is finalizing the work because the patch is available to hackers and torrents sources. The version number for SP1 RC is 7601.17105.100929-1730 and is available as a 337 MB download for the 32-bit software and weighs in at 614 MB for Windows 7 64-bit and Windows Server 2008 R2.

It is available in many languages like English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. The beta version was expected to available from July 2010 and from this we can tell that this is in fact a release candidate that has made his way. After the release, Microsoft is quite about software and new features. So, it is only speculations about the Windows 7 SP 1 RC and we can see more in near future.

The RTM build is also expected to become available at the end of this year and the general distribution should begin sometime in early 2011.