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Windows 7 Beta Released To Public After Delay

Z80xxc! writes "The Windows 7 Beta release is now available for download by the general public, in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Microsoft had previously announced availability around 3 PM PST on Friday, but after unexpected numbers of people proved to be interested in the download, had to postpone it to add more servers."

24 of 848 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Its just a service pack for Vista by brainiac+ghost1991 · · Score: 5, Funny

    the title of that article is: Microsoft exec: Windows 7 is no service pack

  2. Re:All that trouble... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of course we do. If you work in a corporation or industry that runs windows then you know that everyone skipped Vista...so we're pretty much guarenteed that windows 7 WILL be adopted come hell or high water...

    Download it now because you'll be dealing with in another year or two anyway.

  3. Released to public after delay? by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 5, Funny

    They finally released it after a delay.

    The delay?

    They couldn't figure out how to upload the torrent to PirateBay.....

    --
    "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
    1. Re:Released to public after delay? by jc42 · · Score: 5, Funny

      The delay?
      They couldn't figure out how to upload the torrent to PirateBay.....

      Not to worry; someone has already taken care of it.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    2. Re:Released to public after delay? by AsmordeanX · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hah.

      Bandwidth wasn't an issue at all for the downloads. The product key and website side of it was. I downloaded the 64bit client from Microsoft at noon yesterday in the middle of the feeding frenzy and still pulled it down at 1200KB/s which is the cap on my connection.

      A torrent would not have solved it yesterday.

    3. Re:Released to public after delay? by Necroman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wish I had mod points for you. People on here and digg seem to think the solution to the problem yesterday would have been to release it on BitTorrent, when the bottleneck was the registration servers, not the download servers.

      BitTorrent is a cool technology and everything, but people need to stop being so blind as to think it will solve all problems.

      --
      Its not what it is, its something else.
    4. Re:Released to public after delay? by dylan_- · · Score: 5, Funny

      (and assuming the pirate bay .iso you get isn't some virus-laden hack job)

      ....oh, never mind. Make up your own joke.

      --
      Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
  4. Re:Why 32-bit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because Intel's Atom CPU is 32-bit, and Microsoft wants 7 to be on netbooks too.

  5. One of the coolest features... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Informative

    Boot from a virtual disk (VHD) without virtualising -

    http://it-experts.dk/blogs/rsj/archive/2009/01/01/booting-windows-7-from-a-vhd-file.aspx

    After playing with it for a day or so, I think Libraries are interesting but I need to play with them some more before committing. The taskbar is nice, and works well - several of the 'cute' features are well thought out, such as the 'Show Desktop' functionality now being a small sliver of the taskbar on the right hand side, which if you hover over makes all windows 100% translucent, and if you click it minimises everything. Each 'window preview' on an application instance icon in the task bar does something similar if you hover on it - only keeps that apps windows opaque. Nice.

    It seems very stable - the installer was the Windows 2008 one, it literally asks what language you want, where you want it installed and do you want to upgrade or fresh install. Then its away and installing - everything else is done afterward.

    IE8 has issues on this website - lots of refreshing to a blank page for seemingly no reason. Not ready for the prime time - Chrome and Firefox work fine though.

    One thing that struck me, and other people I have talked about, is that due to the focus on icons for the task bar now (instead of the label, as Win95 to Vista uses), some people are really going to have to polish their icons (Putty - the icon is nice when its small, but it sucks at larger sizes - at the moment Im using the Kterm icon for Putty!).

    While I cant say Ive heavily stress tested it, theres been no show stoppers for me as of yet. I'm currently using it as my main desktop (aside from my OSX systems), so we shall see how we get on in the coming months.

    1. Re:One of the coolest features... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nice post and tidbits there, just one tiny nitpick.

      which if you hover over makes all windows 100% translucent

      At what point is something considered 100% translucent? 99.90% transparent? 99.99999999%? =)

  6. Re:Why 32-bit? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I really don't understand the Slashdot posters who say 'I cant believe there will be a 32bit version'...

    I will tell you why theres a 32bit version - because theres already a huge 32bit install base that may wish to upgrade, and by and large, the vast majority of your end user base doesnt need the benefits 64bit brings to the table!

    If MS went 64bit only, they would be slated for it - they would be requiring an upgrade far in excess of any that previous Windows versions have required. Thats why there is a 32bit version - because this isnt about pushing the 64bit agenda.

  7. Re:Its just a service pack for Vista by poetmatt · · Score: 5, Funny

    But what about Mojave? Mojave's AWESOME!

  8. Site seems to break by ya+really · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is it just me or does this download break on every browser but IE?

    I tried:

    • Opera 9.63
    • Firefox 3
    • Safari
    • Konqueror

    Anyone else get similar results?

  9. Re:All that trouble... by halivar · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm firmly in favor of the upgrade. iTunes won't work right in Windows XP x64, while it works great in Windows 7. There are a still a few hiccups (it's beta), but it definitely feels like an upgrade.

    So far, I've tested the following apps to work perfectly in Windows 7:
    - Mozilla Firefox 3.0 (with AdBlock, Flash, and Acrobat Reader)
    - Acrobat Reader 9
    - GIMP 2.6
    - OpenOffice 3
    - iTunes (Vista x64)

    I can't yet get the drivers for my HP Color LaserJet 2600n working (they're installed, but all tasks are stuck in "pending").

    Next up I'm going to install VisualStudio 2K8 and see how that works.

  10. Re:Why 32-bit? by Espectr0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Better yet, i can't believe people install the 64 bit version, only to get the same performance and software incompatibilities.
    Unless you have over 4 gigs in ram it isn't worth it. It won't go faster if the software is not optimized to use the additional memory or cpu registers.

  11. My experience with Windows Hitler. by JimXugle · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've installed Windows 7 32-bit Pre-Pre-Release (build 7000 for inquiring minds) on my gaming machine and it works surprisingly well. Ventrilo took a bit of fiddling to work right, but other than that it worked better out of the box than XP Service Pack 3 does. It didn't need any extra drivers, although it did prompt me to update the Graphics card driver, which it happily did automatically.

    Then the trouble started.

    Since I had several firefox tabs open, I opted to put the computer into Hibernation for the night so I could continue with them this morning. It obliged surprisingly quickly and shut off the system power. Fans went off, case lights went off, and the USB devices lost power. The system was off. Off I Tell you!

    I went to bed. While reading Paris in the 20th Century by Jules Verne, almost an hour after I had shut off the machine, quietly returned to life! I thought that some bump or vibration or some minuscule cosmic ray had activated the case button and quickly dismissed it as some one-off odd event. I went back to reading about Le Grande Entrepôt.

    About a chapter later, I don't know how much time had passed, the beast roared back to life with the ferocity of all fans at one hundred percent and the squeal of the system speaker! Twice in one night was too much for coincidence. I put the machine into hibernation once again, unplugged the power supply and resigned myself that if it came back to life once more, I would call a priest for an exorcism. (which would be quite a phone call, considering that I do not frequent churches)

    Tonight, I will be sleeping with a copy of dBaN by my side.

    --
    -jX

    Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
  12. Re:two license keys by mobby_6kl · · Score: 5, Informative

    It looks like they're assigning keys from a small pool so they're not unique for each person/installation. Both the 32 and 64 bit ISOs are also everywhere, so you can grab any torrent (the hashes match) and then try to register with one of the following keys:

    7XRCQ-RPY28-YY9P8-R6HD8-84GH3
    RFFTV-J6K7W-MHBQJ-XYMMJ-Q8DCH
    482XP-6J9WR-4JXT3-VBPP6-FQF4M
    D9RHV-JG8XC-C77H2-3YF6D-RYRJ9
    JYDV8-H8VXG-74RPT-6BJPB-X42V4

    4HJRK-X6Q28-HWRFY-WDYHJ-K8HDH
    QXV7B-K78W2-QGPR6-9FWH9-KGMM7
    6JKV2-QPB8H-RQ893-FW7TM-PBJ73
    GG4MQ-MGK72-HVXFW-KHCRF-KW6KY
    TQ32R-WFBDM-GFHD2-QGVMH-3P9GC

    Of course, the public beta won't get you any free stuff from MS for bug reports so you might as well just rearm it a couple of times and then get the RTM version or install GNU/Linux in disgust.

  13. Re:Still no virtual desktop by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's because nobody's asked for them. It's not some grand conspiracy against you, and its not as if Microsoft doesn't have the technical resources to provide it, it's just not a very popular feature. Sorry.

    Or are you just cherry-picking one of the (extremely few) GUI features Linux has that Windows doesn't have as some way of boosting your Linux-using cred? I guess that's more likely.

  14. Re:I don't get it by snikulin · · Score: 5, Informative
  15. Re:I don't get it by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Funny

    Have you installed Windows 7 Beta?

    Did your computer grow a Charlie Chaplin mustache, and goose-around the room, ranting nonsense?

    Did your computer declare all non-Microsoft devices in your house to be "racially impure?"

    Did your computer invade Poland? France? Bomb England?

    Did Tom Cruise make a half-assed effort to assassinate your computer?

    Thank you, for participating in this Windows 7 early experiences survey.

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  16. Re:Still no virtual desktop by techmuse · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not true. This was explicitly requested (and rejected by MS VP in charge of Windows Steve Sinofsky) on the Engineering Windows 7 blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/ (I can't find the exact place where he said they weren't going to do it right now, but he did say so). It won't be happening in Windows 7. Sorry.

  17. Re:All that trouble... by purpleraison · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Assuming that major hardware manufacturers don't fuck it up with bad drivers again, anyways. In my experience, that's largely what killed Vista. We're going on two years now I think, and I still can't get a proper not-broken Vista driver from nVidia, on a then-new GPU.

    Uh, you DO realize that the drivers were never released because Microsoft refused to allow developers access to the codebase so they could CREATE drivers, right?

    Microsoft wanted A LOT of money, and all kinds of crazy agreements that only benefitted Microsoft. The developers did all they could to work around MS.

    Ultimately, it was Microsoft that shot themselves in the foot, in addition to Vista being crap.

    --
    I am open source, and Linux baby!
  18. Re:What web browsers support the Windows 7 Beta do by fr4nk · · Score: 5, Informative