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Windows 7 Beta is up!

David_W
Rising Star
Posts: 2,305
Thanks: 33
Registered: ‎19-07-2007

Windows 7 Beta is up!

Windows 7 Beta is up and available to the first 2.5 million people who apply.
For those who helped MS with Beta on Vista, MS were nice enough to give them a free copy of Vista Ultimate, though I don't know if the same would apply to the people who test this version, you never know!  Anyhow, its up, and if you have enough space and time to give it a whirl....
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx
29 REPLIES 29
p_w_d_stone
Grafter
Posts: 315
Registered: ‎05-04-2007

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

Worth noting the offer was restricted to those who submitted at least one bug
http://blogs.technet.com/james/archive/2006/11/21/vista-beta-testers-get-a-free-copy-of-ultimate.asp...
HPsauce
Pro
Posts: 6,998
Thanks: 146
Fixes: 2
Registered: ‎02-02-2008

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

I've got the 32-bit version up and running on some roughly 5-years-old hardware.
Nothing major not working.
It's better than the initial full RTM release of Vista and at first glance on a par with Vista SP1 even though it's just a beta!
AVG 8 has had a couple of "moments" - 100% CPU and had to turn off the Resident Shield temporarily to get it back on track.
Also had a couple of "near freezes" that cleared themselves after a minute or so.
But everything works, even some networking stuff that doesn't in Vista SP1 on the same box.
Looking pretty promising I'd say; it surely will be released this year.  Cool
(PS I downloaded it in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions yesterday evening; not sure when it first appeared, though not on Friday)
David_W
Rising Star
Posts: 2,305
Thanks: 33
Registered: ‎19-07-2007

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

Aye, I have the 64 bit installed and so far its perky, install time was insanely quick for Ultimate version!  Only issue so far is with IE8 rendering the community site incorrectly.  Now have to see if my favourite game can play.
Also, why do they never change the language from en-us to en-gb? There is no Z in finalise >.<
pierre_pierre
Grafter
Posts: 19,757
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

who said so
HPsauce
Pro
Posts: 6,998
Thanks: 146
Fixes: 2
Registered: ‎02-02-2008

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

Quote from: dgwebb
There is no Z in finalise >.<

But there is in finalize, which is how I and my OED spell the word.  Wink
pierre_pierre
Grafter
Posts: 19,757
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

was that the twelve volume, or the two volume like I quoted  Grin Grin
techguy
Grafter
Posts: 2,540
Registered: ‎12-09-2008

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

Gonna wait for Windows 8 or whatever, just looks like Vista with bells on and I was daft enough to cough up for the ultimate upgrade to that.
HPsauce
Pro
Posts: 6,998
Thanks: 146
Fixes: 2
Registered: ‎02-02-2008

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

Quote from: pierre_pierre
twelve volume, or the two volume
Neither, Concise & Pocket - both to hand whilst at my PC.
pierre_pierre
Grafter
Posts: 19,757
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

got my two volume on CD courtesy of a mag, loads on PC dead easy
VileReynard
Hero
Posts: 12,616
Thanks: 582
Fixes: 20
Registered: ‎01-09-2007

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

I despize the use of the -ize suffix in words such as finalise.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

Gentle suggestion - this isn't General Chit Chat so can we stay on topic and not discuss the foibles of English/US English spelling
orbrey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 10,540
Registered: ‎18-07-2007

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

Tried it - loved the way it works and the new tweaks, but GTA IV wasn't having any of it. It's therefore not suitable for gaming rig, which is a shame, but I will be sticking it on my laptop.
I do like the new taskbar a lot, and the libraries looked really good (though annoyingly you can't add a folder on a network mount to the Documents library without turning on offline files...)
Major gripes (which I did report):
1) You STILL need to reboot the computer when changing to a new workgroup. Come on Microsoft.
2) I had a fairly nasty issue with network drives. If you try and access them when they're not online, Windows 7 stops the connection working even when they are online. Trying to reconnect gives an error message, as it can't add a new connection whilst the original (non working) connection is still there. I had to unmount the drives and then readd to get things working.
Other than that I was impressed. There's some very nice touches to the GUI, though I daresay trying to move a window to the top of the desktop and having it expand to fullscreen all the time might get a bit annoying.
orbrey
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 10,540
Registered: ‎18-07-2007

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

Tell a lie I remembered the other issue.
The winsxs folder is still there.
After 4 hours of being installed, this folder was over 5GB in size.
I've read a few threads and posts on this now and it's a major sticking point for me. Basically the winsxs folder holds old versions of files (exe,dll etc) that windows might need at some point, maybe. You can't delete it or windows will stop working. You can't move it, or windows will stop working. The only way to thin it down is to uninstall some stuff, and even then that probably won't make a difference.
Microsoft's excuse for this kind of sloppy programming?
'Hard drive space is cheap these days'.
You try telling that to someone with a 40GB SSD (hi Barry!).
David_W
Rising Star
Posts: 2,305
Thanks: 33
Registered: ‎19-07-2007

Re: Windows 7 Beta is up!

I've been trying it out today, and it is so much faster than Vista, everything just seems to fly, even the LCD on my G15 is faster.
The only game I've tried is Final Fantasy XI, the frame rate on that is steady 29.1/29.5 (its capped at 30fps) and my videocard (EVGA 8800GTS) is running cooler than it ever has done in Vista (currently 63C rather than the 68 it would be in Vista).
Overall its been a fantastic improvment over Vista, though I don't think I like the new "quick launch" thing, and can only open one copy of IE that I can tell.
Bugs I've reported are little ones, like UAC changing desktop to Basic when it shouldn't have, and the extended attribute bug that knocks memory down to 0 if you install Kaspersky and copy insane numbers of files (42,000), it also didn't update the dialogue box so always said 0 bytes per second, so Tiscali speeds!  I'm really looking forward to 7 coming out, if they allow you to change the taskbar to "classic" it'll be perfect.
/edit - IE8 is improved also, the url memory is fantastic, a bit like Chromes in that instead of just the url it will give you the page title of the web pages as you type the url in, for instance, if I type com it shows Forum Index | Community Site and then the URL, it also highlights the domain name (plus.net), it really is quite good!