Microsoft yesterday kicked off a Windows 7 promotion that heavily discounts copies of Windows 7 for college students in the US, with the price nearly matching what Apple charges for its Snow Leopard upgrade.

In a last promotional run-up to the Windows 7 release next month, Microsoft is urging business customers to start their upgrades now with examples of customers already using the software, and another acknowledgement that the company learned lessons from how it handled Vista's release three years ago.

Microsoft will turn off the download spigot for Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) on Thursday around 11 a.m. ET, the company confirmed on Tuesday.

Experienced PC users know that not every operating-system upgrade goes smoothly -- but that bit of understanding does little to offset the annoyance we feel when we're faced with seemingly unresolvable installation problems. Windows 7 has presented some users with a few serious upgrade bugs of its own. Don't worry: We'll explain how to exterminate them.