Microsoft has released Windows Vista build 5536.16385 on Windows Connect only. Microsoft calls this a Pre-RC1 Build. This means that this built will have part of the improvements that will be set for RC1. This build is not available for public download. According to first Experiences:

1. Performance has much improved. Vista now consumes a bit less memory on startup. Applications are more responsive and there are fewer crashes.
2. New Icons are now being used in the Control Panel and MMC; all the old dialog boxes have been removed and replaced with new and more advance ones.
3. Vista installs much more quickly now, accordingly, if you have a very fast machine, it takes only 22 minutes.
4. Lots of issues with drivers have been corrected. Now, all drivers work well with Vista. WDDM drivers also recover gracefully from crashes.
Microsoft has said that in previous builds, performance was not a huge issue, but now, as the RC1 is nearing in, it is. Microsoft admitted that because of the new SDL (Security Development Lifecycle) that they adopted for Vista, they could not lose any more time on Performance issues. Now that all of the codes have been already written, they can concentrate on the performance issues now. Vista build 5536 does promise a great Experience.

Internet Explorer 7 RC1 has also been released. You can get it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx

However, I won’t even have a look at the final version, since I have got Opera.