Good to know its finally out (RC-2), but not for us to download yet...I heard from other's, that were able to download this update from M/S site, that  its pretty stable so far...

SR

Dell Dim 4400 (Purch June 2002)
2.6 ghz (Upgraded from 1.7 ghz)
400 Mhz bus
512 Mb DDR 2100 Ram
Windows XP Home SP-1a
Roadrunner Cable modem
17 Inch Dell 1703 FP monitor
Dell sound bar for monitor
Zone Alarm free firewall
Nortons Anti-Virus 2003
Gainward Ti 4200, 128 Mb video card
USB 2.0 and 1.1
48XCDRW SAMSUNG SW-252S

I wouldn't expect the final version to be available before Labor Day at the earliest.  The forums will be fillof posts shortly after as EVERY security with XP will now be turned on, which means a lot of P2P networks are going to crash, since their XP firewalls are now tunred off.

I did have some problems with SP2 so I uninstalled it, but then again, I do a lot more tweaking than the average bear, plus the fact I tuned my test machine into an ISA server which I thought was a more prudent use of resources.

OK . . I'l bite . . what is a ISA server?

Just updated to RC2 on the testbed pc and it seems much perkier than RC1 ( or SP-1 for that matter)

I do some video processing on that one and it seems faster . .

wrs

Firewall.  Either comes as a stand alone product (Beta Version is what I have) or you cna also get it as an integral part of Small Business Server 2003.  The Beta version is pretty slick!

RC2 broke my iPod.  Anytime I tried to make system changes with my iPod connected it would automatically restart.  If I even just put my iPod in it's dock, my computer would restart.  Oh well, it's still just a release candidate.  But I did notice that my machine booted faster and did indeed feel perkier as previously noted.  Cheers all!