Well this was a bit of a surprise to myself and I think most other people! RC1 has come just a couple of weeks (barely) after the August CTP and is a later build number than expected (5600 instead of the 5536 most people expected). I am downloading the x86 version right now and will post a review once I have upgraded, hopefully they will have included the nforce RAID drivers this time.

It will be released to MSDN and TechNet subscribers soon too, but Connect users are getting it first which is nice! You can see some screenshots of the RC1 on Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite. Here is a bit of a preview of the new default wallpaper, it seems Microsoft is continuing to rotate through the wallpapers trying to keep everyone guessing!