On Thursday, the Release Candidate version of Windows 7 was prematurely made available for download on Microsoft.com, as Microsoft is in the process of drafting up the final version of the operating system to be released later this year.

The controversial Internet Explorer browser can now be uninstalled from the Windows 7 operating system, complying with the numerous objections of the European Union under the claim that the inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows violates the competition law.

Even as early as Windows 7 Build 6801, a great number of reports show that Microsoft's new operating system has made major improvements in terms of performance and energy efficiency that put it well ahead of Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Microsoft explains where and how these improvements were made.

At WinHEC, Microsoft demoed the new multitouch capabilities that come with Windows 7 with the support of N-trig (a popular producer of touchscreen displays) who has already released the first multitouch-enabling drivers for Windows 7.

For PDC 2008, Microsoft is releasing screenshots of Windows 7 that confirm the rumors of a new taskbar, start menu and fewer warnings.

Microsoft has announced that the final, official name of the next version of Windows will be the same as the codename - Windows 7 - making this the first version of Windows to keep its codename as its release name.

Microsoft is making efforts with Windows 7 to have it accommodate parallel processing better and take more advantage of today's multi-core CPUs in order to gain more performance for the operating system and its applications. However, it will take future versions of Windows to take full advantage of parallel processing, when the architecture of Windows will be based on managed code.

Microsoft is opening up about Windows 7 and starting to look for people to beta test the new operating system, and if you qualify, you'll obtain a copy of Windows 7 for you to download, with your own license key.

As expected, Microsoft will be handing out a pre-beta version of Windows 7 during the PDC2008 conference to all its attendees, on an external 160GB hard drive. However, it's likely that after the PDC ends, Microsoft will make Windows 7 available to a larger group of beta testers.

As Microsoft starts to spread more Windows 7 builds to beta testers, more screenshots and releases make it online for anyone to view and download. Microsoft tries to track down the leakers to make the release of Windows 7 more mysterious and exciting.