Windows 7 Catch-All

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Post all your Windows 7 thoughts and impressions here. We can expect the overlords will enforce a similar set of rules from the Windows Vista thread.

Limited Beta release tomorrow (Jan 9).

Note that you have to have Vista SP1 installed to upgrade to the beta, and it's time limited to expire August 2009.

I wonder if it's worth doing a clean install before trying out the beta. I've been running Vista since the beginning, and even though the service packs have helped, it still feels chunky after all the various patches.

Still, I'll back up my drive and try it out, it sounds like a step forward. Fancy new taskbar, here I come.

Yeah I have been thinking about dumping the beta on my main box to try it out. I been reading good things about it, maybe time to drop 64bit OS on my box.

I've heard positive things about Win7 so I'd like to give it a try. Anyone know of a good dual-boot program, preferably free?

I'm gonna give it a go

Looks like the MS website is getting hammered...

It's suppose to be out midday 9th of Jan...

I'm looking around the site and haven't found the DL, could anyone help me out to the registration form?

Page is REALLY slow. Be patient.

The site is getting hammered right now. Even the technet site is battered now but I was able to DL overnight from technet.

I disliked Vista.

And before anyone says anything, I still use Vista at work, things are still broke even now such as Group Policy Management console freezing, the slow response from network resources, the hard drive still grinds on occasion despite the service pack, high memory usage and the drain on the poor crappy Intel graphics chipset is more heartbreaking than those silly adverts to sponsor a donkey.

So there, I win. All hail me.

Now because I'm a little gunshy about Windows 7 as a result of the previous OS, I haven't floored the EVILBEAST of DOOM with the beta just yet. It's sitting in a VM by itself, with 2GB of RAM, both cores at the ready seeing as Vista raped ye olde single processor machines without caring. And so far, the experience has been pretty much the same.

There are some differences like the updated Media Player that can play DIVX out the box, Paint and Wordpad have been sexed up to look like Office 2007, and things have been moved around again. And there is a handy screen capture thing built in called "Snipping Tool" which will help with print screens....if you care about that that is...err....That's as far as I've got really.

Performance on the VM is woeful as the HD is being bent over the desk and made to feel like a dirty girl. Yes, that's the second sex phrase I've worked into this so far.

The gadgets don't seem to work for me, IE8 breaks websites due to MS not keeping to standards for so long, then changing their minds and well just the fact it reminds me too much of Vista, I'm undecided. Far too early and there is next to nothing on there to see if the application compatibility is any better.

The only proper way of seeing what has improved is to install on the beast proper, but that will wait till the weekend. There are more lies to create...

The snipping tool has been around since Vista and is available for XP as well.

I hear they also beefed up the standard CALC.EXE. It does stuff like interest and depreciation calculations.

I was going to post and ask if anyone had gotten it yet as I can't find anything on the windows 7 website to indicate an available download. Guess it isn't ready yet, but I'm going to slap the thing on my main machine and bite the bullet. The home PC is brand new so I won't be losing anything if things go bad.

Will the Windows 7 be an upgrade version or a fresh install version? I'm feeling adventurous and would like to actually use the 4 gb of memory in my system but I sure have alot of programs(games) installed in XP.

Eezy_Bordone wrote:

The snipping tool has been around since Vista and is available for XP as well.

I had no idea until they placed in full view for me on the start menu, so as far as I knew that was brand new!

Elliottx wrote:

Will the Windows 7 be an upgrade version or a fresh install version? I'm feeling adventurous and would like to actually use the 4 gb of memory in my system but I sure have alot of programs(games) installed in XP.

You can do both with the beta BUT you can only upgrade from Vista with the beta. The pundits are assuming/hoping that the actual release will be able to upgrade XP. And it should as it is those people MS is after with this release.

Edit - Also you'd not be able to upgrade from 32bit to 64bit in either case, even if it was xp32 to xp64, vista32 to vista64 or win7-32 to win7-64. You need to reinstall the OS if you want to switch architectures.

Elliottx wrote:

Will the Windows 7 be an upgrade version or a fresh install version? I'm feeling adventurous and would like to actually use the 4 gb of memory in my system but I sure have alot of programs(games) installed in XP.

Can't you do a parallel installation and have the two systems on? WinXP SP3 and Win7b1?

I think I found this link. I'm about to click, so don't flame if it doesn't work.

You can dual boot yes, but that's not the same as upgrading which is what Elliottx was asking, he won't be able to run most program from one install to another.

Thanks for the answers. I'm going to try dual booting as I would like to see Windows 7.

Here you go, the link, the servers are getting hammered.

Hopefully some of my MS customers will be back next week, I'd like to get my hands on this without having to download a tonne.

No luck thus far. Does it give you a registration key first, and then you download?

Hmm, it's changed since I posted it. It had two drop downs one for the 32bit the other for the 64bit. Now it just says "Coming soon!"

Yeah, they pulled it due to heavy traffic. No date for when they're going to re-release it.

Why don't they just make it available via windows update for those folks that have vista SP1? Seems like that would help to alleviate some of the heavy traffic.

hehehe. I guess people really do hate Vista

Thanks for your interest in the Windows 7 Beta. The volume has been phenomenal -- we’re in the process of adding more servers to handle the demand. We’re sorry for the delay and we’ll re-post the Beta as soon as we can ensure a quality download experience.

7 is still Vista with more facelift, it's not fundamentally that different, I don't think.

Links courtesy of lifehacker... direct download from Microsoft.

32 BIT http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso

64 bit http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.ISO

Downloading it now and the 64bit version is clocking in at just over 1meg/sec. Total size is 3.2 GB it's an ISO.

Of course downloading the thing will only get you a 30 day free trial. The Key Generator is still offline so it doesn't do a lot of good.

there is a key command, courtesy of lifehacker as well that extends the 30 free trial to 120 days.

slmgr -rearm

is the command to run...

Looks like MS's servers are getting destroyed. Which is ridiculous, considering MS is suppose to be all up with the webs and cloud computing etc...

Could this have been a publicity stunt to make it seem like everyone and their mother wants windows?

Of course downloading the thing will only get you a 30 day free trial. The Key Generator is still offline so it doesn't do a lot of good.

It's not possible to enter the 30 day trial and insert a key later to remove the time limit?

JC wrote:

Could this have been a publicity stunt to make it seem like everyone and their mother wants windows?

No, the publicity stunt is when you all find out you've just downloaded Vista again and are running 'Mojave'

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