It never seems to fail that when we are expecting a major software update announcement event the links to the software end up being discovered early and get posted to the web.

This is no different with Internet Explorer 9 RC which we were expecting to drop this afternoon during a Microsoft announcement in San Francisco later today. Tom Warren over at Winrumors has the news about the leaked download links which do work because I am downloading the RC file as I write this.

Also Tom has an exclusive early look at Internet Explorer 9 RC if you are interested.

I wonder how long it will take for the RC version of Internet Explorer to surpass the 20 million download count that the early beta has experienced. Here are the links in case you want to get ahead of the rush (thanks Tom).

Windows  7 (x86 version)

Windows 7 (x64 version)

Windows Vista (x86 version)

Windows Vista (x64 version)

Note: you will need to reboot after installing the RC of Internet Explorer 9.

[Editor’s Note: Shortly after Steven submitted the post for cross-posting from WinExtra, Microsoft contacted us with an official notice, included below: –mrh]

Today, Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate is available and ready to be downloaded fromBeautyoftheWeb.com! Thanks to the tremendous response from more than 25 million beta testers, we’ve had a lot of feedback on Internet Explorer 9.  Based on what we’ve heard from customers, we’ve updated the build and it is now feature complete!  From performance improvements, to reliability updates, to UI tweaks, the RC is ready for primetime and it’s the final countdown for developers to make sure their sites are ready.

Here are some additional resources:

• For information on the all-up Internet Explorer 9 story, visit:

• Internet Explorer 9 Fact Sheet
• Partner and product images
• Internet Explorer Blog
• Exploring IE Blog

• Based on the feedback from beta testers we’ve have made changes theclean UI in Internet Explorer 9 including notifications, Tabs and Site Pinning, for more information check out:

• First look at 5 features of IE9 RC Video
• Developers discuss the Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate

• Internet Explorer 9 continues to deliver privacy improvements. In addition to delivering on our commitment to ship Tracking Protection with RC, we already have 4 Tracking Protection Lists live and available for customers to use today.

• Current Tracking Protection Lists include Abine, TRUSTe,PrivacyChoice, and AdBlock Plus.

• We’ve made additional improvements to hardware acceleration andInteroperability in Internet Explorer 9. According to SunSpider, Internet Explorer 9 RC is 35% faster than Internet Explorer 9 Beta (322ms in thebeta to 209ms in RC). We are also continuing to implement standards as they become stable and today we are excited to announce that Internet Explorer 9 RC supports Geolocation, playback of H.264-encoded video using the HTML5 video tag, and now WebM video as well, when a VP8 code is installed on Windows. For more information:

• IE Test Drive Site
• A look at three performance demos for IE 9 Release Candidate Video

• Finally, there is a Developer Discuss Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate and here are some of my favorite quotes:

• “With IE9 the browser gets out of the way.” – Danny Riddel CEO/Founder, Archetype
• “I think that they’ve done a really fantastic job of removing the things you don’t need and it lets you focus on the content, which is the reason we’re on the web anyway.”  – Robbie Ingebretsen, Principal, Pixel Lab
• “The graphics engine is smoking fast. That means we can do really cool things.” –  Grant Skinner,  Chief Architect & CEO,gskinner.com, inc.
• “It really has HTML5 as its foundation.  So it lets us focus on designing and not redesigning again and again.” – Rick Barazza, Principal Experience Architect, Cynergy
• “Now we really can realize the vision we have for any particular project in a matter that we’ve never been able to do before.”  –Mike Luciccini, President/Founder, Archetype

We hope you enjoy browsing a more beautiful web, and please let us know if I can answer any additional questions for you.