Alright, enough speculation: the Windows 7 Release Candidate will be arriving on May 5 to the public, this according to Microsoft's Partner Program website (updated today, seems like):

We are pleased to announce that Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) is available. Windows 7 RC is the prerelease version of Windows 7. Since this is not the final release, your PC will gather and send information to Microsoft engineers to help them check the fixes and changes made based on testing of Windows 7 Beta.

Test-drive Windows 7 RC today to see for yourself—and to show your colleagues and customers—how Windows 7 delivers improved management, security, reliability, and performance.

Partners: If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now. Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009.

For those still not in the know, the RC is the pre-release version of Win7, meaning it should be very close to the final product and fit enough for daily use. Essentially, for those who don't want to wait another six to twelve months (especially the ones who didn't make the jump to Vista), this is for you.

Microsoft has previously written about stability and the RC in its blog, advising fresh installs and backing up data:

Testing a pre-release product means just that—it is testing and it is pre-release. Even though this is a Release Candidate, we are still testing the product. We have very high confidence but even if an error happens once in 1,000,000 we want to make sure everyone is taking the precautions normal for a pre-release product.

Two weeks to get ready!

Update: the source text has been reverted, however you can see it as it was with the screenshot below. According to a Microsoft Online Concierge Chat, "currently the Windows 7 RC has not been avaiable through the TechNet subscription yet, only the Microsoft OEM partners such as Dell, Siemens are taking part in the RC's this period of test," so we assume these folks have it now and the public will be getting it on the aforementioned date.