Microsoft announces availability of Windows 7 Beta and Windows Live

The wait is over, folks. Sir Steve Ballmer has announced the availability of Windows 7 Beta and Windows Live here at his CES keynote. The official word is this: "The beta version of Windows 7, Microsoft's next-generation PC operating system, can be downloaded today by MSDN, TechBeta and TechNet customers. Consumers who want to test-drive the beta will be able to download it beginning January 9 at http://www.microsoft.com/windows7." Moreover, Windows Live -- described as "a free suite of communications and sharing applications that make it easy for people to communicate, share and keep their online lives in sync and in one place with one login -- is now globally available. Oh, and did we mention that January 9th is this Friday? Huzzah!

[korngames @ Jan 7th 2009 10:13PM]

yep

[Rob @ Jan 7th 2009 11:24PM]

On January 9th, the Windows 7 Beta will be available for Windows enthusiasts to download via the Windows 7 page on Windows.com. The Windows 7 Beta is going to be available download-only (we’re not sending out physical media) and available for a limited time to the first 2.5 million people who download the beta.

The Windows 7 Beta will be available in English, German, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi, and each language will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions (except Hindi which will only be available in 32-bit). Because the Windows 7 Beta will be offered download-only, it will be provided to you as an ISO image (an .iso file) that you download. After downloading either the 32-bit or 64-bit ISO image of the Windows 7 Beta, you will be required to burn the ISO image to a DVD to install Windows 7. So you want to be sure you have a DVD burner before spending the time downloading the ISO image.

To burn the ISO image of the Windows 7 Beta to DVD, if your PC comes with Nero or Roxio products – you should be able to burn the ISO image to DVD. If you don’t already have DVD burning software on your PC, you can also check out ImgBurn which is free and can be downloaded here.

The Windows 7 Beta only supports Windows Vista SP1 to Windows 7 upgrades. So if you intend to do an upgrade – be sure it is on a PC running Windows Vista with Service Pack 1. We are not yet announcing anything regarding finalized upgrade paths for Windows 7.

The Windows 7 Beta will be only available in one edition, which is roughly equivalent the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista.

Also, another important thing to keep in mind is that the Windows 7 Beta will expire on August 1st, 2009.

[michele @ Jan 11th 2009 8:44AM]

so will Microsoft refund me for the Vista that I just purchased or give me a newer version?????

[millie @ Jan 11th 2009 10:57AM]

hello i have window xp (HP computer) is this just for vista only or for all computers down loading. and is this a free down? and or how much will it cost us......

[Joe @ Jan 11th 2009 12:47PM]

ehhm..is it just me or our consumer trends carried out while sleeping or under the influence ? Millions of consumers are still dealing with vista glitches...Millions! one of the glitches does not allow people to gain access the Internet. Without Internet, consumers cannot get the daily/weekly de-bug updates. So a Fortune 5 company, whose profits do nothing but rise is swindling a million costumers. Imagine going to a bakery to buy an unbaked loaf of bread. Or buying a car and soon realizing it is no assembled ? Or a computer program that is not fully finished....Vista! So It ok for Microsoft to dupe millions into buying un-finished non-functioning software now they want to drop it! And we're getting excited by it ?

[Nirvan @ Jan 13th 2009 4:54PM]

@Rob

I have two questions:

1. What if I want to do a fresh install. Like after I burn the ISO to DVD, and then I clean out my harddrive so its like I have a new hard drive with no OS on it. Will it work?

2. Do you mean that the beta we install will automatically de-activate? If so, what will happen to our computer, will it automatically go back to our previously installed Windows Vista SP1?

Thanks!

[Nomi @ Jan 7th 2009 10:14PM]

Wow...its quiet in here.

[korngames @ Jan 7th 2009 10:18PM]

yep.

[bamboo @ Jan 7th 2009 10:22PM]

SSSSShhhhhhhhhhhhh.........................We're trying to watch the keynote.

And hey you, down in front. Your blocking my view!!!!!!!!!!!

[loocas @ Jan 9th 2009 1:13PM]

Yes, since all the fanboys are quietly (and enviously) waiting for the Snowy Kitty to come online too...

Poor things...

[gage006 @ Jan 7th 2009 10:18PM]

Blah, not waiting until Friday and it's not up on MSDNAA, time to grab it off the bay.

[Ayle @ Jan 7th 2009 11:32PM]

Last time I checked we don't get betas in msdnaa... But I do hope that we'll get Ultimate this time instead of just business...

[GON @ Jan 7th 2009 10:20PM]

I'm getting it officially from Microsoft. I don't really trust rorrents.

[Jon @ Jan 7th 2009 10:35PM]

Me too. I'm conflicted. I want to try it out badly, but would rather wait for an official download. But that's not till the 9th (I know that's only 2 days, but damn). Oh well, wait it is.

[David @ Jan 7th 2009 10:47PM]

I have it from the torrents, works fine.

[Ryan @ Jan 7th 2009 11:01PM]

he said test drive, so does that mean we can download it (the .iso) on friday?

[sfn @ Jan 8th 2009 10:35AM]

You don't trust torrents so to remedy your trust issues your downloading from Microsoft?

[GON @ Jan 8th 2009 3:43PM]

Yes sfn
I'm getting it from the official source, who may have any kinks worked out, not to mention this beta will last until August. The unnofficial stuff will expire 30 days after installation.

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 9th 2009 11:20PM]

I believe most MS download pages have the file;s checksum listed.. ... Just compare the CRC/MD5 number to the new file and you'll know if it's been tampered with ..

[Flashpoint @ Jan 7th 2009 10:20PM]

I downloaded IE8 beta and to tell the truth - besides its ability to resume sessions - I'm not impressed.

I get page errors when I go to engadget on it and on top of that, the text box is buggy and the scroll bar jumps around. I also notice its even SLOWER than the already slow IE7.

I'm running Vista Premium on my DV6835nr and thus far, no problems so I'm not gonna take the chance screwing myself up with 7

[zed @ Jan 7th 2009 10:41PM]

composition fallacy

[GON @ Jan 7th 2009 10:44PM]

I had those problems with speed too. I later did a clean install and used IE7, and it was actually faster than IE8. Then I upgraded it, but I didn't lose speed this time. It renders a lot of websites better than Firefox and opera, but it's still slower. Since IE is a part of Windows rather than a standalone browser, my guess is that a slow IE probably means that your system is infected or damaged like mine was.

[wud_e @ Jan 8th 2009 9:16AM]

I tried IE8 and got crash errors whenever it tried to resume a session.

[tinwrapper lightsaber @ Jan 9th 2009 2:52AM]

Google chrome is by far way faster and better than IE7 or IE8

[wud_e @ Jan 9th 2009 8:46AM]

@wrapper lightsaber.

Not being a Google fan I'm an Opera Guy myself.

[Michele @ Jan 11th 2009 2:43PM]

Would you suggest not bothering with Beta and just staying with Vista. Truthfully I do not fully understand what the difference is?

[Ignatius @ Jan 13th 2009 8:46AM]

Who the hell uses IE?

Get Firefox.

[decapitor @ Jan 7th 2009 10:24PM]

I'd be all over this but the betas get deactivated and I'm not going to reinstall 500GB worth of music production apps again in 6 months or so. If the beta is so awesome just release the full version already eh?

[MoShang @ Jan 7th 2009 10:28PM]

I'm in the same boat regarding music production apps - but am dying to give it a go. Especially since I skipped on Vista.

[korngames @ Jan 7th 2009 10:30PM]

You could run it from an external HDD, just to give it a shot. I already got the beta, and I'm going to try it out tomorrow.

[decapitor @ Jan 7th 2009 10:35PM]

I installed the 32 bit beta 7000 that leaked last week and I liked it, so I know I'm going to upgrade from XP (it's gotta happen eventually), but I just have too many things to install and not enough time on my hands.

[Eh @ Jan 8th 2009 1:57PM]

Thats what partitions are for. Keep windows on one partition and the 500gbs of stuff on another.

[digitalfirex @ Jan 11th 2009 2:13AM]

lol wow insta fail. Why not just learn to manage the hard drive better? What if the copy of windows you have has a fatal error from which it cannot recover? What happens to all of your 500gb of data then? I'd give harddrive partitions a try my friend. It is a good practice to partition the hard drive so that windows is installed on one partition (C:/) and data on another partition (D:/). That way if one day windows fails, you can do a clean install of windows, say from a recovery disk, and NO data is lost. That said, you can also make a partition to TRY windows 7. This way, no data is lost, on August 2009 you can delete partition with windows 7 and go back to the regular windows you have on another partition. This is known as a multi-boot configuration.

ps. Windows Vista lets you manage hard drive configurations from within the OS, so no special software needed. Start, right click on "Computer" then select "Manage". On the panel, select "Disk Management". You should now see what the current hard drive configuration is. Right click on a partition, and you should see some options. Shrink Volume is to make a current partition smaller, (takes away free space) and extend volume makes partition bigger (by using unallocated space made by shrinking). Unallocated space can also be made into a volume. Google for more help.

[Ryan @ Mar 16th 2009 11:23PM]

You don't know much about beta software do you. You release betas because the folks who make the software aren't going to own every single f-ing computer ever made. They need consumers' feedback to let them know what hardware is incompatible and to let them identify potential problems with stability. For instance, I installed an application with a known compatibility issue (in this case, Daemon Tools lite). When it installed, the Windows 7 beta diagnostic app told me there was a known incompatibility. I installed it anyway. Guess what, my computer blue-screened and restarted 4 times before it cleared out the lingering startup commands (the application's installer failed, so it kept wanting to reinstall). I actually found a small hack on the internet to deactivate a different system component that conflicted with the Daemon Tools application. There was another application like Daemon Tools that I installed, called VirtualCloneDrive. It installed, used a verrrry similar hardware virtualization system-modification, yet it ran into no problems, and it caused no crashes.

Also, there are video games, some of which have code written to detect what operating system you are running. So when you either install them or try to run a copy of the game that you had on your Windows XP partition (in my case, I tried to run The Witcher), then you can report that data to Microsoft so that they have an accumulation of bugs to analyze.

You've never been a programmer, I am willing to bet. I was at one point a killer programmer for the TI-83+SE. In that tiny calculator's operating environment alone, there are plenty of bugs to run into. Think about the trillions of lines of code the master/head programmer has to keep up with at Microsoft. He has to trust his grunt workers to properly create portions of code, then he has to mix them into a working collection of programs.

You know that you sometimes make mistakes at work because you're either tired or distracted. The same thing happens in Microsoft's workplace. Yeah, I know, it's scary: they're humans too.

Watch the movie "Grandma's Boy". There is at least one person like the main character working at Microsoft.

by the way, I hate Apple...but I don't love Microsoft either. Linux is what I advertise. Microsoft is beginning to become more like an honest company. They've run into enough litigation, and Bill Gates is getting older (meaning he's softening up the way humans do when they get older--it's a psychologically-based requirement of humans).

[Jacob @ Jan 7th 2009 10:31PM]

2 questions: can anyone get the Beta from microsoft for free? (non illegally) and will it work ok in Boot Camp?


Thanks

[Kevin Gass @ Jan 7th 2009 10:41PM]

1) yes on the ninth anyone can download it for free

2) thats up to Apple, but seeing how the drivers worked in Vista, then yes

[CJ @ Jan 7th 2009 10:43PM]

Well, probably not legally.

It should work fine in bootcamp, because it'll just pick it up as an NT build.

[ZenStyleJunglist @ Jan 8th 2009 9:57AM]

@cj actually it will be completely legal. Did u even read the article?

[Ahmed Alzayani @ Jan 8th 2009 11:44AM]

Download is always legal, the upload or share is illegal. because it's against the EULA.

[Dan @ Jan 7th 2009 10:35PM]

What is the tentative release date of the retail copy?

[-Tj- @ Jan 7th 2009 10:38PM]

Love those "I'm a PC" stickers they've got over the logos of the laptops on the Windows 7 page. I guess that's one way of hiding a company logo.

[lucas @ Jan 7th 2009 10:43PM]

I am downloading Win7 from msdn now. I already had a copy from pbay.

[Cat Moves @ Jan 13th 2009 1:12AM]

pbay?

[Anthony @ Jan 7th 2009 10:43PM]

so is the public beta going to work past 30 days?? like are we all gonna get keys for this?

[David @ Jan 7th 2009 10:52PM]

With reg hacks u can get 120 days, unsure about key releases though.

[Daniel M. Dean @ Jan 7th 2009 11:16PM]

OMG it's true! I'm downlading the x64 build off of TechNet now!

[Tyler Mills @ Jan 7th 2009 10:55PM]

This beta lasts until August 1st, 2009.

It's in the EULA.

[Sor @ Jan 7th 2009 10:58PM]

one quick question can i install it and have a dual boot with vista ?? So far something like EasyBCD is needed for dual booting. Does it have to be installed over Vista ? anyone here with dual booting and how he/she made it to share some of his knowledge ? :)

[Guy @ Jan 7th 2009 11:08PM]

Yeah if you install on a new partition, your boot menu will let you choose between windows7 and vista automatically.

[Anthony @ Jan 7th 2009 11:35PM]

Vista and 7 have a boot loader. if you have 2 partitions on your hard drive that you boot Vista from you can install 7 on the second partition and whenever you start up itll ask you which OS you want. (like if you have a recover partition that your pc came with you can format it and use that...or just make a new partition.)