Yes, Virginia, there's a leaked copy of
Windows 7 beta floating around, and if you aren't the type to "break the law" and check it out yourself, the folks at
Tech Cast News have made for you a picture-laden walkthrough of the installation process and some of the OS's new features, including Alt+Tab doppelganger Aero Peek, the icon-only Taskbar interface, and the Smart Folder-esque Libraries. Overall, they found the beta a major improvement over Vista and predict the final release will put Microsoft in consumers' good graces again. Here's hoping that apparent
January beta release comes to fruition so we can sweep that
other OS under the rug a little bit faster.
Update: Looks like
Tech Cast News is down, standby for innovative Ballmer-based conspiracy theories.
Update 2: ... and it's back!
posted December 30th 2008 12:01PM
The king is dead, long live the king!
*The old king is dead, long live the king.
Le roi est mort, vive le roi! ... no "old" in that...
I use Vista Home Premium 64 bit and have been since July of this year and haven't seen any of the issues people have complained about. Why does everyone have to bash Vista? What the f**k is it with you people who do this? If you don't use Vista, don't bitch about it. If you do and hate it, at least state why. Explanations are few and far between from the supposed Vista users who hate it.
Yes, it needs a modern processor and a decent amount of memory to work. Should everything be made to work with old shit? If everything were, we wouldn't advance too much would we? I know it might be difficult for some to leave behind their super duper PC's from 1995 but technology is moving forward and so should you. Buy a quad core and be happy. Vista will thank you.
by the way, mac users you can install windows 7 through VMWare. just install it as a vista install without a serial.
Using win 7 now, works great on my Fujitsu Siemens V5355, 1.7 ghz 3 gb of ram with some shitey SIS graphics.
The new task bar is going to take some getting used to but its not as bad as people say it is, Microsoft need to make it more obvious that you have multiple windows open on one icon, for instance simple number system would be great!
I'm guessing that they want Windows 7 on netbooks. If they can make a better OS with low enough requirements that even a very-low-end computer can run it, they'll sell more, and they know it.
Having used Vista at work (forcibly) and XP proudly at home, now installing this to compare the three, I still prefer XP just because it's wider compatibility range with more devices/drivers, but have to admit the absolute 180 in performance hogging that plagued Vista.
The new permissions scheme really bugs me, but I understand its necessity. *sigh*
The only real issue I had was the firewire 800 drivers (belkin doesnt make them for my card...sigh), and I had to download Vista motherboard drivers and my firewire 400 port on the mobo still didn't cut it...Still, everything else, much more usable. Kudos, MS.
you still have to give permission for everything you tweek like in Vista? mmm... of course its better for security but its quite annoying none the less... can you confirm that please?!
UAC can be turned off . Easiest way to do it on a clean install would to press hover over 'getting started' in the start menu and press change uac settings. A slider is presented and you can choose what you are reminded of
when the final version is suppose to be ready? 1 year? 2?
Merely quoting Coldplay ;)
Down again.
He's right.
just to tell you guys who are installing, the completing installation step takes a very long time. (for me at least). around 30++ minute
That's not really that long for an OS...
hehe installing Quark Xpress from floppies back in the days was like 4-5 hours..!
Thanks people for helping me get my Windows 7 up and running...
BUT i have one more problem. My comp cannot change to aero theme because it says my graphics memory is too low.
I have an ATI Radeon (dunno what version) and I'm sure it can take it but it seems like it doesn't have the suitable driver.
Should i get the driver for Vista? But I can't find out what graphics card i have even if i use dxdiag or device manager. Please help...
Get GPU-Z, it'll give you the information you need. http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/
Btw, doesn't ATi have a single driver, like nVidia?
That's no normal fish... it feeds on RAM and has a very weak immune system... you have to pay an extra hundred dollars for a better fish
Update 3: The web site is down!!!!
Change it! This news is useless without it's link!
Hi RUGRLN. Didn't expect this amount of traffic would knock the server down at my hosts end. Installed a cache to prevent any further problems so site should be up and running now.
Great! Been waiting for it since yesterday...nice review!
Sorry, the sites been down quite a bit. Website should be accessible now without any further problems.
I hope that Microsoft pay attention to the user.
From my point of view. An OS should manage my hard drive. So i would expect Microsoft to extend, enhance in that direction.
Keyword whould be available for all king of files and folder.
We should be able to choose the type of view we want, not only folder
Indexing has made a nice step in vista, but could be enhance, to include off line media. better search interface and search result.
Better synchronization tool espacially. espacially when we download, Windows should be able to tell use if we have previously download a similar file, how many of you have duplicated files.
This is a nother field and OS should work, find and eliminate duplicate, unless it is desire.
well lets start with that... :-)
They're working on most of this stuff in their WinFS project.
still I like to download anything I want (duplicate or not) without having popups all the times...
OMG so i just got the windows 7 beta and installed it virtually on vmware with 1GB RAM allocated to it. WOW it runs way smoother than my 4GB Vista machine I can say that already. Microsoft may actually be headed in the right direction on this one!
I'm trying it out, I love it. Has some nice features, also has some pitfalls as I see it. It took a REALLY long time to install, close to 3 hours, that could be because I used an iso to install it, but oh well...wasn't going to waste a DVD on it. Shuffled Background pictures is nice, doesn't take up any more RAM or CPU speed as a separate program would. So far, it's running speedy, but not the fastest thing in the world, I hope some of the things are fixed...and that I can find a code and activate the software before I have to go back to vista...btw...the taskbar is pretty sweet. Just some of my thoughts
Hopefully this won't be another disappointment.
up and running on vmware 2.0
and? look good?
props to Vista 64 and Adobe. What a change going from XP 32 and CS3 with less than 3 gigs of ram to Vista 64 and CS4 and 8 gigs. And in such a short period of time, too. Looking forward to W7. I have an old P4 not doing anything, where can dl W7 and give it a shot?
you can run this beta on your mac via parallels. works well enough. only bug i had was with ram settings for the VM itself.
have this installed on an hp mini note 2133, via 1.2GHz, 1gb ram, s3 graphics. works like a charm! much faster than the stock vista basic, even with full aero and all the fancy graphics enabled. rock stable, no crashes or bugs yet, except for a slight glitch where every once in a while the computer seems to freeze (as it is trying to switch power profiles) when i remove the power cable. apart from that, really smooth. infact i would go so far as to say that this build is better than vista as a primary OS (provided all ur present hardware works with it, i havent had any problems with it so far though) also, amazingly, the battery life has gone up drastically from under 2 hours to almost 2.5 hrs now! im assuming its got to do with how 7 uses resources.
installed it on another computer, a 4yr old p4 3Ghz, 2gb performance ram, sata disk, ati hd3850 512mb agp card, intel 865gbf board, works flawless. much much better than vista, though not nearly as responsive as xp.. but then it is definitely much more stable. im seriously considering switching to 7 as my primary os even at this beta stage, but i still need xp for my gaming.
where can i download the wallpaper?
The only problem I've had with Vista is that anytime there's an update, it crashes whatever I'm working on to intall the update. Is there any way of stopping that?
dumb question but , does anyone know if you will need to do a complete OS install if you use the beta windows 7 and it expires?
I want to know if I must use a wide screen for windows 7. Because when I install the Win 7 use a non wide screen, the desktop didnot display the whole one, I lost the right side of the desktop, I cannot operate the right-down corner, because of I conld not see it, it out of my screen