Microsoft has released Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 to the public.

• Customer Preview Program

If you signed up for beta 2, and activated it, then you should already have an e-mail. If you did not activate it, you can still download it here, and you can still use your beta 2 key.

I’ve had it for the last couple of days, and I’m disappointed. My first try with Vista was with the pre-RC1 build, and that worked nicely. However, in both attempts to install RC1, I’ve had general problems with Vista. Here are some examples,

• Some options do not work. For example, if I click on the volume control, it won’t open. If I try to open speech recognition control panel, it won’t open.
• Almost every icon has a User Account Control icon. These don’t activate UAC, but the icon is still there.
• When I installed it, it had problems optimizing (it did not do it, it just went straight into Windows). I had to restart Vista to be able to produce a Windows Experience score.

I’ll try (once more) installing this release. It expires on June 1 next year.