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First Look At Windows 7 Beta 1

The other A. N. Other writes "It seems that Microsoft couldn't keep the lid on Windows 7 beta 1 until the new year. By now, several news outlets have their hands on the beta 1 code and have posted screenshots and information about this build. ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 column says: 'This beta is of excellent quality. This is the kind of code that you could roll out and live with. Even the pre-betas were solid, but finally this beta feels like it's "done." This beta exceeds the quality of any other Microsoft OS beta that I've handled.' ITWire points out that this copy has landed on various torrent sites, and while it appears to be genuine, there are no guarantees. Neowin has a post confirming that it's the real thing, and saying Microsoft will be announcing the build's official availability at CES in January."

8 of 898 comments (clear)

  1. World domination 201 by Janek+Kozicki · · Score: 5, Interesting
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  2. why aRe:They're glowing! by irtza · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are no new features in this build. If Microsoft has any new stuff lined up for the RTM then we're going to have to wait to find out.

    All this talk about stable beta's seems a bit pointless. If you change the name and theme on the product, you can't real muck it up too bad. What's the point of this other than to try to put the name "Vista" in the grave?

    Anyone know what these people are so excited about? Couldn't get much real info from the article. They comment that its snappier than other betas. How about compared to XP? That would be the real comparison I would like to see.

    I am a linux person myself - Ubuntu on the computer I am posting from, but I did use Windows on my laptop before wiping it. I am also not opposed to having windows installed if I gain any benefit. That is what I want to hear from people, what are its compelling features (I don't play games).

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    When all else fails, try.
    1. Re:why aRe:They're glowing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's slow as hell. as one of those that have ran it, I'll tell you right now. the speedy feel of the XP days will never EVER come back, until your computer has way more processing speed and data channel speeds that exceed what the newer Microsoft OS's will use.

      I have Vista and Windows 7 running nicely. sata 15,000 rpm drives and hardware that is fricking insane fast makes it feel like XP on modern hardware.

      posting anon to avoid being kicked by the MSFT NDA

  3. Waporware by Mr+Europe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And we can start quessing which of the mentioned fine features will actually be in the release version of Win7. This has happened so many times before.
    Remember when during waiting of win95 many magazines were worried what will happen to McAfee and other virus-scanner companies when the new windows is fully virustolerant?

  4. Re:No Idea what the techspecs are on this but by talz13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, I was disappointed when I heard that vista was going to have a 32 bit version. If microsoft wants to push the transition to 64 bit, they really need to make a 64 bit only version.

    Also, please drop the 6 editions and go back to home and pro. If you want windows in a developing country, either pay for it, download it, or make microsoft price it at what the local market will bear.

  5. Did you turn off Aero? by coryking · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most nerds seem to turn it off assuming it is "flasy useless eye candy". Little do they know they basically turned off hardware accelleration. You do know that Vista, with Aero enabled, will delegate most of the window drawing to the video card. In fact, the more ram on your video card, the better, Vista stores all the window data on that instead of your system RAM.

    If you've got a card that does DirectX10 it will even hand the fonts to the video card and let the video card deal with font rendering and caching. Once you turn off Aero, the video card is just an old-school video card. Since a certain set of nerds seem to hate nice looking things, I bet most of them turn off the one thing that makes Vista way more snappy than XP--Aero.

  6. Re:Oh really? by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    EXACTLY! I tried Server 2K8 and I was like "Why? Why in the hell can't you just add a basic GUI on top of this and sell it to business users for the desktop? Why?" It is low resource,doesn't have tons of bloated multimedia junk that has NO business being in a business OS, and runs solid as a rock. So why can't those of use who just want to get our work done buy this on a machine without shelling out insane money for a server license? Why?

    And as for the one who marked me troll, accept it: Vista is a flop. It is a giant festering turd of fail that the general public can't get away from fast enough. Why do you think EVERY single ad we see and every blog is either "I'm a PC" or Win7? Because MSFT knows that wasting more money on Vista is pointless because the public has spoken and they don't want it. For those of you that have gotten Vista to work or like it,congratulations! You are in the minority! I have sold more machines in this past year and a half and built more custom PCs than I have in the 15 years I have been in PC repair. Why? Because folks are happy to shell out extra money to me so they DON'T have to take Vista. I have been working with MSFT products since the days of Win3.1 and I have NEVER seen folks go so far out of their way to avoid a MSFT OS, even during the horror that was WinME.

    Sadly from what I have seen of Win7 instead of learning from their mistakes and going back to their roots and making a solid, backwards compatible, low resource business OS they are instead going to pile even MORE bling bling on top and then really insult the customers by getting rid of quicklaunch and replacing it with an Apple Dock which they will probably screw up on the implementation anyway. I swear if I didn't know any better I would think Ballmer was trying to burn the company down on purpose. I just don't get who exactly they are trying to please. The home users HATE change, the gamers want an OS that sucks as little CPU and GPU as possible to give them better FPS and the business owners want low resource usage so they don't need expensive hardware along with backwards compatibility with all their old business apps. So who exactly are they pleasing with this desire to copy all things Apple? Because from the way my customers are happy to shell out for even older off lease business machines just so they can have XP over Vista it sure ain't them.

    The one nice thing about all this is we may finally see real competition brought back into the OS market like we had in the 80's. Because I have the sinking feeling that Win7 is going to make MSFT customers run away even worse than Vista did. Oh, and before someone points out the Vista sales numbers please note that ALL Vista downgrades are counted NOT as an XP purchase but as a Vista sale. And you know it is popular when even Tigerdirect is using "Includes XP Downgrade rights!!" in giant letters as a selling point.

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  7. Re:They're glowing! by EvanED · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not the original poster, but I really wish Apple would let me. But they insist on selling OS X only with their own hardware, and then don't make hardware I both want and can afford. To my eyes, iMacs are stupid because it doesn't make sense to throw away a hundred or two hundred dollar monitor when you get a new computer. Hell, the bulk of my current system is about a year old, but I have components in there from 2004, and that's just what's in the main case. The Mac mini is probably even less upgradable than the iMac, and has for a moderately powerful system today is an underpowered processor and small amount of RAM. (For about $200 less what I paid for my current over a year ago, you get (1) dual core processor instead of quad core, (2) the same amount of RAM, (3) basically integrated graphics shared with main RAM instead of an 8800GTS. Wow, great deal.) Now at the other end is the Mac Pro. Beautiful systems, but start at twice the cost of my current system (this time I think about comparable in power), which is well out of my price range. Then you add on top of that the fact that I like to build my own system, and Apple has put itself out of my market. But I very well might actually get one if it weren't for those other problems.

    On the laptop side, last I checked they're in the same ballpark as a Thinkpad, so that's not so bad. But if I were to buy a laptop now, I'd probably get either like a netbook or a tablet... again, neither of which Apple sells.

    So from my standpoint, I'd love to run OS X... but I'm not going to pirate it, I'm not going to give Apple if they are going to call me a criminal for hacking it to run, I'm not going to buy Apple hardware, and Apple won't let me run it otherwise, so I'm out of luck on that point.