I was hoping to do a quick write-up by now, but I'm still downloading it. I guess I can comment on the RC2 release. It's pretty slick...lots of eye candy. I like the translucent frames. I'll have to get used to navigating around the new folder structure, but I'm already getting familiar with it. I like that they followed the *nix approach of everything being under the user folder, they've really simplified that structure, you're basically one or two clicks away from anything you need - one to open your user folder, and another to go to your downloads, pictures, etc. And even some of those folders are on the Start menu, or you can add the ones you use most.
The good news is that there seems to be very good driver support out of the box. I'm running the 64-bit version and it detected and installed drivers for all of my hardware except for my Epson R1800 printer, which is not too surprising since it is a fairly high-end photo printer and probably used by about, oh, 0.0001% of Windows users. But I was pleased to see that it properly detected all of my other devices, including my Radeon 9800 Pro video card and my Hauppauge PVR-150 TV Tuner card. Speaking of the tuner card, setting up Media Center was a snap, I was watching TV on my PC in about 15 minutes after going through the setup process. More importantly, all my motherboard hardware was set up properly. In the past, with previous versions of Windows, I've always had a bunch of hardware that showed up in Device Manager that was lacking drivers until I got around to installing the VIA 4-in-1 driver package, which would always lead to several reboots, and then I would typically have to download additional audio/video/USB drivers from the motherboard manufacturer. I didn't have to do any of that this time, it all just worked.
The task bar is really slick now, when you mouse over items in the task bar you get a pop-up window that is a miniature version of the application it corresponds to, and updates in real-time to match what the application is displaying. RSS feeds are in the upper right corner of the desktop along with a clock.
There were a couple of issues I had with RC2, so I can't wait to play with the final release sometime later today or early tomorrow. One issue was that my machine would never completely shut down, I would always have to do a hard shutdown. The other was that, if I left my machine on, periodically I would hear the Windows start-up sound. I'm not sure what it was doing, but when I'd eventually get back to the machine it would tell me there was a problem with a driver, but I was unable to determine which. Hopefully these have been fixed. I guess I'll find out soon.
