Windows 7 Beta

[Twilight]

The Beta is up, but the servers are crashed due to the traffic as of right now ...

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

So if I want to try this, do I have to "overwrite" my current Vista OS? or do I have to set up a seperate partition to try this on? And if the beta expires, then what? It will just stop working?

I'd like to try it but I don't want to screw up my system...

 

[Corran Horn]

Unfortunate that you cannot 'upgrade' the Beta off an existing XP installation. You can only do it from Vista.

I would have thought they'd try to snare some XP users to jump over Vista and land on Windows 7.

 

[backstept]

anyone know what build they're giving out today?

 

[Sheep]

Unfortunate that you cannot 'upgrade' the Beta off an existing XP installation. You can only do it from Vista.

I would have thought they'd try to snare some XP users to jump over Vista and land on Windows 7.

I thought I read you could do a fresh install in addition to upgrading a Vista install...

I know it's not the same as an XP upgrade, but at least you don't need Vista if I'm correct. Fresh installs work better most of the time anyway.

 

[Twilight]

anyone know what build they're giving out today?

December 12th

This is the full build string:

7000.x86fre.winmain_win7beta081212-1400.

It's the same build released to MSDN developers in December

The Beta is available here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx

 

[Arrqh]

Unfortunate that you cannot 'upgrade' the Beta off an existing XP installation. You can only do it from Vista.

I would have thought they'd try to snare some XP users to jump over Vista and land on Windows 7.

I thought I read you could do a fresh install in addition to upgrading a Vista install...

I know it's not the same as an XP upgrade, but at least you don't need Vista if I'm correct. Fresh installs work better most of the time anyway.

Not only that, but solid as it is I'd be a bit hesitant to be using it as a primary OS. It is still beta after all! I'm going to do the same thing I did with the Vista beta; make another partition and dual boot.

 

[Corran Horn]

Unfortunate that you cannot 'upgrade' the Beta off an existing XP installation. You can only do it from Vista.

I would have thought they'd try to snare some XP users to jump over Vista and land on Windows 7.

I thought I read you could do a fresh install in addition to upgrading a Vista install...

I know it's not the same as an XP upgrade, but at least you don't need Vista if I'm correct. Fresh installs work better most of the time anyway.

I got that from here...

Q: Can I upgrade from XP?
No. It seems that for the beta that Vista is the only valid upgrade route (final Ultimate Extra for Vista users perhaps?). I expect this to change for the final release to include XP.

Maybe I am misinterpreting.

 

[Arrqh]

Right, you can either do an upgrade install if you have Vista SP1 or you can do a fresh install.

 

[Twilight]

It's important to note that if you *do* install the beta through Vista, you *CANNOT* revert back to Vista after a Win7Beta install. Once you've committed to it, that's it!

Do **not** put Windows 7 on your main machine - only a backup testing machine or another partition / HDD. Win7 is just a beta!

 

[SalvorHardin]

Hmm, perhaps i should try this beta.
I really haven't paid any attention to Windows 7 development.

Anything really new and innovating on it?
Is it still NTFS or do they have a new file system ?

 

[Twilight]

Hmm, perhaps i should try this beta.
I really haven't paid any attention to Windows 7 development.

Anything really new and innovating on it?
Is it still NTFS or do they have a new file system ?

NTFS, nothing new in that department.

Think of it as a slightly streamlined Vista with some UI enhancements that do nothing more than hide complexity (meaning it doesn't really simplify anything ... it just cleans things up). There are apparently some genuinely solid improvements in a few basic, key areas, though. And it's supposed to be a very stable and fully featured build - which is more than you could ever say for the Vista beta.

Everything you could want to know about W7 can be found here:

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/

 

[SalvorHardin]

Hmm, perhaps i should try this beta.
I really haven't paid any attention to Windows 7 development.

Anything really new and innovating on it?
Is it still NTFS or do they have a new file system ?

NTFS, nothing new in that department.

Think of it as a slightly streamlined Vista with some UI enhancements that do nothing more than hide complexity (meaning it doesn't really simplify anything ... it just cleans things up). There are apparently some genuinely solid improvements in a few basic, key areas, though. And it's supposed to be a very stable and fully featured build - which is more than you could ever say for the Vista beta.

Everything you could want to know about W7 can be found here:

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/

Thanks, I'll check it out.

 

[ALF]

The last thing I would do is f&ck up my system by installing Vista so that I can convert to 7. I'm not going to make my system worse before it gets better for chrissakes.


Anyways... if it indeed works on a clean install it might be fun to experiment.

 

[Twilight]

Yeah - you don't have to have Vista to get to the 7beta ... it's just the only way to "upgrade" to it as opposed to a clean install (i.e. no upgrading from XP).

But yeah, you can just clean install it...

 

[Noname Given]

Unfortunate that you cannot 'upgrade' the Beta off an existing XP installation. You can only do it from Vista.

I would have thought they'd try to snare some XP users to jump over Vista and land on Windows 7.

That's probably because they still use the same kernel and core routines that were deveoped for Vista (and the kernel was changed quite a bit from the XP kernel). But, I bet if you do the 'upgrade' - it'll leave a number of your old Vista dlls, etc. and run just like Vista too (MS is famous for doing that with upgrades, leave the old stuff and 'translate' when needed - overall it often slows overall performance; but I'm sure they'd love people to test it.

 

[CorporalClegg]

It's out tomorrow - you will be able to get it from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

It's a nice OS, I've been using it for a couple of months. Thing to watch out for - there is a problem with WMP12 that will strip out the first couple of seconds of certain MP3.

I feel stupid. I don't see the download link. Where is it?

I brought this up about a month ago in a thread in the Misc forum, it seems like this really is just 6.1. Are they calling it 7 simply because they want to burn all Vista bridges?

 

[Bob The Skutter]

It's out tomorrow - you will be able to get it from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

It's a nice OS, I've been using it for a couple of months. Thing to watch out for - there is a problem with WMP12 that will strip out the first couple of seconds of certain MP3.

I feel stupid. I don't see the download link. Where is it?

I brought this up about a month ago in a thread in the Misc forum, it seems like this really is just 6.1. Are they calling it 7 simply because they want to burn all Vista bridges?

I think it's 7 to unify the lines, mobile 7 is out soon too.

 

[TheGodBen]

I didnt even realize they were this far ahead on windows 7. I guess Vista is a bigger flop than I imagined (though I've never had any real issues with it).

While Vista has been perceived as a flop by the public, this is not the reason why 7 is being released so soon. If you look at the history of Windows releases, the average time between OS releases has been 2-3 years, the five years between XP and Vista was the exception, not the rule.

Windows 1.0 - November 1985
Windows 2.0 - November 1987
Windows 2.1 - May 1988
Windows 3.0 - May 1990
Windows 3.1 - March 1992
Windows 95 (4.0) - August 1995
Windows 98 (4.1) - March 1998
Windows 2000 (5.0) - February 2000
Windows ME (4.9) - September 2000
Windows XP (5.1) - October 2001
Windows Vista (6.0) - January 2007
Windows 7 (currently 6.1, probably 7.0 upon release) - Official release date is January 2010, rumoured release date is July 2009

Vista took so long because they were going to completely overhaul Window's foundation with WinFS, but they could never get that to work properly and Vista was thrown together so they could get a new OS on the market. After that Microsoft said there would never be another five year gap between OS releases.

Anyway, there is a direct link to the 32 bit beta on the MS site here. It keeps on cutting out on me though, the most I managed to get was 500MB out of 2.4GB. Plus, you don't get an activation key this way.

 

[Twilight]

The servers have been HORRIBLE all day.