Windows 7 beta ISO leaked to internet, world
By Laura June 
posted December 29th 2008 3:01PM
posted December 29th 2008 3:01PM
In case you hadn't heard: delicious, beautiful, mind-bending Windows 7 -- apparently slated for a beta release in January -- has leaked and is now available. That is, if you're willing to, you know, break the law and download the ISO that's floating around on BitTorrent trackers all over the place. The good news here is that the leak is apparently a quite stable, newer beta version (build 7000) than previously spied (6801). We wouldn't know, of course (we try to walk the straight and narrow), but let us know if you've got your hands on it... how's it treating you?
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
I haven't yet seen a single coherent argument as to why. I'm going to try Windows 7 too, when it's released commercially and has a 64 bit version so it recognizes all 10 GB of RAM, but Apple should be scared of it?
Mmm, I'm gonna say no.
I'd say yes. Its Vista done right. Or more accurately this is MS's OS 10.3...yah know....the OS X that didn't suck ass so hard it sucked out all of your internal organs. See the thing is that Tiger vs XP, tiger was exceptional. Leopard vs Vista, leopard won. Leopard vs. Vista + SP1 + good hardware.....meh. Toss up. Leopard vs. Win 7. Completely equal, and as far as I can tell Snow Leopard is just Apple cleaning up the mess then made over 7 years dropping new features in without taking the time to really streamline things. So for the foreseeable future there is equality between the two. And my bet is Apple is going to rush Snow Leopard so fast to release around the time Win 7 does that its a buggy shitpile. Why do I think this? Jobs's ego wouldn't be able to handle MS releasing first. He'd probably have a heart attack from climbing the walls and screeching at his drones.
@zak, not sure what you want in terms of coherency (unless you mean the Parallels kind). YOU won't switch (back?) to Windows. MS isn't running a switch campaign. They will never be cool like Apple because they will (for the foreseeable future) be common. However, if you are looking for reasons why Windows might be superior to Mac for some, it might be the abundance of applications (especially games). It might be that almost every "coherent" reason for someone to switch TO OS X has been removed (most were gone by Vista SP1). I challenge you to name something significant other than platform specific application development that you can do with Leopard that you can't do with Vista SP1 (with free utilities--and don't poo-poo this as it goes both ways--OS X needs Quicksilver to have something as good as Vista's Start Menu search, for instance). It is now down to taste and need, and I honestly can't think of anything that OS X has that would make someone "need" to run except cross-platform development (that's why I have mine). Photo/Video/Media shops all swear by them, but even there I don't know of much that doesn't have a Windows counterpart that is equivalent.
My home PC died and I'm running OS X exclusively now on a MacBook Pro and I like it. In some ways, I like it better than Vista. However, I'm not gonna stay a switcher. There are simply too many things that I can't do that I need to without running Parallels or Fusion (and games I can't run without boot camp). Seems silly for ME to choose something that is (maybe) marginally more pleasant to use and then have to bend over backwards to do what I need to.
The best news is that for 90% of the world there is a choice. Both are essentially equivalent now. Gotta love competition.
Is microsoft going to just go on with its buisness and pretend that this isnt happening? Is microsoft just going to slip this under the rug. They should at least have a press release or somthing. mabe they will send out the beta early... not likly
btw... im in high school so my spelling and grammar sucks
linux user... and proud!
I hate apple
I like microsoft
I love linux!!!
My spelling and grammar didn't suck when I was in high school, nor did the spelling and grammar of my fellows. That excuse doesn't make sense, unless you meant grade school instead.
Service and Process footprint on a clean boot is greatly reduced over Vista. The approach taken by MS is to leverage current and future processing power to launch services as needed as opposed to pre-starting and keeping idle. It makes perfect sense considering the goal is an OS that is flexible enough for a netbook/mini-notebook.
Performance and general responsiveness is improved over Vista and gaming seems to perform as well as Vista; I played Left 4 Dead without any issues. A check of dxdiag shows that DirectX 11.0 is currently implemented in build 7000.
This is clearly the OS Vista should have been, but this is standard MS development process. A complete reworking and rewrite of each version of Windows (Windows 95, Windows 2000, Vista) is usually followed by a streamlined, refined and optimized release (95 OSR2, XP, W7).
Windows 7 should be much more competitive with OSX and the Microsoft haters may be in for a surprise.
I hope they'll have a reduced price upgrade for vista users.
Of course there will be. Since when has there ever not been a lower priced upgrade version available for people running the previous OS?
If I were you I wouldn't count on it...
Sorry, but Microsoft stated that a PUBLIC beta would be released in late December or January. All this is, is an advanced copy of a free, beta, trial version of 7. I don't think there is anything illegal about that.
Downloaded. Just waiting for my 320GB 7200 drive to show up for my 1.2Ghz lappy. The ultimate test of this thing is on such a low end tablet. The cool thing is I can supposedly use the key code for Vista Beta that MS sent out all those years ago to activate it. Now I just need to find it *rummages through gmail*
I read that MS isn't going to support/allow SLI (or crossfire if your barn door swings that way) in windows 7. Is this true? Does this beta support it or has MS decided that i dont need my second graphics card and that i should just run games from the CPU like god intended. If so i better get used to crysis at 800x600 at 6...no 7 fps
No, it's not true.
Its not going to be a framework supplied by Microsoft, since SLI/Crossfire is not standardized.
So, like it works now, it will be done via Nvidia/ATI. It isn't as elegant as a built-in feature, but you wont lose SLI.
-More application switching effects than just Aero
-Desktop switching
-Transparency textures and/or additional themes
-Disable WMP resizing folder album art to 200px (and fix media center's unresponsiveness to input)
-The taskbar should be programmed to tell if an application is still running (ie. in the tray) instead of animating it as closed
-The ability to drag files onto taskbar icons for 'open with' functionality
-Explorer tabs
-Optional installation available (so I can remove those components I don't want, like touch features, I'm happy with my new 22")
-Unnecessary default start menu shortcut items removed (and stuff like 'XPS viewer' placed in the Applications folder)
-Shutdown button placement... this one speaks for itself...
-Bug: Dotted highlight border is sometimes displayed, just disable it completely
-Bug: Open/Close window aero animation exhibits a slight jump
-Bug: Fixed minimum start menu height
Can you run this version of Windows on BootCamp? How much partion space would you recommend? I might just pick up a small external hard drive to run this...why? Pretty much just because I can! :-D
something tells me the only pussy you're familiar with is yourself.
I want to try this out! Would there be drivers for an older computer?- Intel P3 933mhz, with 256mb ram and other crap parts. Will this old computer even be able to run Windows 7, it runs XP fine...???
wouhouuu! talk about a good news! Is Adobe and other software working on it right now??
Anyone have experience on upgrading to windows 7. I've tried it twice on my vista business, and it won't take.
People shouldn't hate Microsoft so much just because Apple is better at aesthetics; honestly, I seem to think everyone in this world is biased towards Apple, even Windows users. I know someone who recently chucked their unibody Macbook out the window and recorded it for the world to realize how much he hated Windows... apparently, they crash more, but who can testify for that?
Am I right?
No, there are many, many other reasons to hate Microsoft.
I'll try to stay legal on this one.
so lets say im a user that installs this on my machine and has a valid vista that i love, and dont wanna get into all that genuine windows stuff with microsoft because i just happen to like legalities. none the less, i wants to test out this windows 7.... would my best option be to do a virtual machine thing, or should i partition my drive and install it there, but once ive had my fun ill take out that partition?
If you truly want to test the OS with your hardware, I would partition and install. Then when you're done, erase the partition and merge it back with the original partition.
VM => quick test. you can check out the GUI, the new menus, the software support etc..
Partition => real hardware test, plus you have a true idea of how reactive the OS is.
Make your pick.
Everything looks great until Microsoft bogs the OS down with all the last minute patches and fixes (not to mention the future patches and fixes). Most of their revenue comes from OEM sales which means that they are going to encourage (along with all the PC OEMs) people to get a new PC. This, in turn, means that you will need a faster PC. I hope that I'm wrong, but the only reason I ever had Vista is because I'm a sys admin and need to know how to support it. Vista is real bad...hopefully they make forward progress with Windows 7.
I like how half of the mac fanboys here are talking crap about windows 7 being "an epic fail" when they haven't even used it, meanwhile, the other half is looking for ways to boot into it with bootcamp or parallels. funny.
anyway, I like vista a lot and cant wait to try 7.
I'm pretty excited about the Windows 7 and trying this out is very tempting, but I think I'll wait for the beta to be released from MS. If everything goes as planned, I will gladly go out and pay for this OS next year instead of getting it off a torrent site like I have almost every other copy of Windows.
has anyone tried installing this on the hp touchsmart to see if the multi touch works with the entire os.
I doubt the drivers are in place yet but i suppose it could be worth a go.
Microsoft leaked it themselves to get publicity and free market research... I am willing to put big money on it.
So what?
Well, got this all installed on my HP DV2699EA laptop, using the upgrader from vista home premium. was actually very impressed that the upgrader worked - the only problem it came up with was with Windows Mail (because its no longer installed as standard). works pretty well, already found a few bugs and issues, but overall not bad. works brilliantly with my homeserver setup as well with the new library folders.
I agree with many reviews, comments, etc about this that this is not really a new OS, its more of what Vista could have been. Lots of small improvements which are such a relief - eg, when you plug in a usb drive, it now shows the storage space bar on my computer, wireless networks are all shown on a single click, etc.
The big thing i do not like is that the classic start menu is no longer avail as not part of the explorer file - such a shame as the vista style to me is a pain in the rear!
Think i will keep this running until the public beta is released then do a clean install with that and run it as the main os - tbh, its gotta be better then Vista HomePremium!
All i can say overall tho, is that Microsoft are working amazingly hard to ensure this is working right - and they have so far suceeded! I still have windows98 beta CD lying aroudn somewhere, and tried all major betas from Microsoft - all pants in comparison!! :D
That aspect ratio looks just like the one on the new Vaio P, and the resolution as well. Will it blend?
Hmm, starting to look rather nice... I do wish they'd get rid of that stupid orb start button and just have the Windows logo, it looks awful. As does having a numeric date; "27 December" would look much nicer than 12/27/2008.
I've been running Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit w/sp1 on an Athlon 64 3200+(2 ghz), 1gb Ram, Old Radeon 9600XT with Aero AND Dreamscene(motion wallpaper) for 6 months. It runs GREAT as opposed to what people say who tried the first release version when they had not so great driver support and a stupid amount of bugs. So hearing that Windows 7 runs good on a 1.4ghz celeron 1+ghz is not surprising.
Windows Experience Index 4.0
Processor 4.1
Memory 4.2
Graphics 4.4
Gaming 4.0
Hard Drive 4.2
You don't need 5.9's to get a good experience in Vista sheesh.
Vista with less resource usage is cool, but I would prefer more in the backwards compatibility department.
I've got it up and running smoothly.
It installed in about 20 minutes and it finds drivers FAST. I only had 2 drivers it didn't find on it's own via Windows Update, so I pointed it to my Vista drive and it grabbed the 2 drivers it wanted from there.
So far so good. No crashes. I'll be adding more to it over the next couple of days.
I am like the task bar so far as well. Nice update.
Would seem Microsoft aren't too happy about this leak. Almost absurd over-reacting, their poker faces need work.
Link: http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11152&Itemid=1
Hows this run on atom processors, and is it able to take advantage of the intel graphic chipsets accompanying the atom processors on most laptops?
Thanks
Uncanny resemblance to OS X. Sorry to break it to you, but it has to be said.
i am quite a big fan of both osx and windows but... dont you think icons only taskbar was introduced in osx years ago? i hope windows 7 brings both stability andperformance of osx and compability of windows xp.. so i dont have to swith between osx and windows in my macbook...
I have this thing working on a Macbook Pro 4,1, and besides the lack of touchpad support it's working just fine. I am really enjoying the new taskbar and the ability to pin apps to it. Overall it's pretty peppy, boot time is just ok at this point (just over a minute to get to desktop). Biggest improvements seem to be in space required for install (it's around 5GB) and RAM usage. It's running frirefox 3 with about a dozen tabs open right now and it's chugging along at around 3/4 of a gig for RAM usage. I'm looking forward to how this turns out in retail.
My experience with Vista has been entirely problem free. Between me, and two of my friends, we haven't had a single major complaint. On my friend's laptop, the wireless internet can be a tad touchy, but I feel that it's a problem because Sony has their own wifi control panel thing. My other friend has zero issues with Vista, which is how I am. It ran beautifully on a 3.0Ghz Pentium D desktop with 1GB of RAM, which is actually fairly outdated now.
Windows 7, however, runs even more beautifully on my desktop. Build 7000 is noticably more stable than that of 6801, and takes up very little RAM. I like the fact, that in the task manager on Build 7000, there are only around 10 processes running at startup, which is SO much simpler than Vista and XP. This release, once at retail, will be a solid competitor in the computer market.
Yeah I got it too its great! Functionality of vista with (almost) the speed of XP.
I wish they would just release it to retail so punkbuster will support it so i can play call of duty4 on it. sigh
intel dual 2140 running at 2.ghz
2gigs ram
1gig geforce 8500gt
asus p5-gzmx MB
windows 7 beta 1 runs great no flaws even found drivers for older zydas usb wlan.
Looks alot like vista still, which isn't the worst thing. it would be nice to see an official MS version on Windowblinds and object desktop streamed lined into their OS's for a wider variety of personalization. I think it easier on resources than Vista cause i can convert avi's to DVD like 5 minutes faster using convertX to DVD 3.
I've been using MS products since before the death DOS, back in the command line days. And i don't have any plans to stop. (though my wifes Ipod touch is an amazing little device, even better if she'd let me unlock it :P)