The look and feel is much improved. The default theme is great -- some of the reds/oranges could be tweaked, tasteful use of transparency (Win 7's is pretty gaudy, IMO), useful desktop effects (alt-tab, desktop switching, minimize/restore). My favorite improvement is all the stuff they did to get rid of the system tray and consolidate the "notification area". It looks better and is much more useful. Occasionally the battery icon disappears which is annoying but hopefully that's fixed in the final release.<p>Everything (almost) worked out of the box on my Thinkpad SL410. The mute and mic button on the keyboard don't work by default. Hibernate on lid-close, power saving, and all that jazz work perfectly. It cold boots incredibly fast. Noticeably faster than Windows 7.<p>I haven't figured out how to disable the track pad yet (it isn't in the mouse settings). :/<p>I've been using the RC for almost a week and had it crash once because of (I believe) Pulse Audio. <i>shakes fist in air menacingly</i><p>Before I was using Arch and it never crashed (in a year) but I was using fewer programs and it was very utilitarian.