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Microsoft Leaks Windows 7 RC Date — Before May 5
CWmike writes "Microsoft will deliver a release candidate of Windows 7 in about two weeks, the company's Web site revealed Saturday. According to a page posted on Microsoft's partner program site, Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) may be available to paying subscribers to Microsoft's developer and IT services before May 5. Partners will be allowed to download the release candidate on that date, the first Tuesday of the month. 'Partners: If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now,' the page read Saturday afternoon. 'Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009.' The link to the download, however, shunted users to the TechNet download page, which did not list Windows 7 RC as one of the available files. This is the second time in just over three weeks that Microsoft's Web site has leaked information about Windows 7 RC. Accidental, or buzz-builder?"
Lust.
Gluttony.
Greed.
Sloth.
Wrath.
Envy.
Pride.
Developers.
Developers.
Developers.
Developers.
Developers.
Developers.
Developers.
Developers.
Well, it takes time to analyze the content you are copying and report it to the RIAA.
The only reason to run Windows 7 is to know what the non-free software world is doing but you can just watch online videos to find that out. I recently did this and here are my impressions in bullet form:
* Windows 7 is a lot like Vista
* next desktop background feature is kind of cool but i saw it in kde4
* new task bar - makes it easier to switch to mac and more annoying to actually switch tasks using a mouse
* control panel still in the new harder to deal with style but not sure if it still loads piecemeal like Vista
* Libraries are introduced as another way to segment your data in an annoying and OS-locked-in way.
Microsoft hasn't had much success with any OSes released since 2002 so it's probably not wise to dick people around too much.
But this time it's going to be perfect. They promised!
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/02/04/2826167.aspx
XP hid the dialog before the copy was really finished. Vista changed this so you wouldn't pull out a USB key before the operation had finished.
Vista RTM had some copy performance issues but SP1 fixed those, and during Win7 there was a significant focus on improving copy / move / delete performance.
I thought I'd chime in and ask the undying question of whether Microsoft had come to their senses and finally decided to give free upgrades to Windows Se7en for all legit consumer Vista users.
They could really win some good will back from their users if they did this...kinda like the free Zune* firmware updates for the original players...
*No, I am not a Microsoft apologist, Vista user, or Zune owner. I am typing this from my MacBook while taking a break from my PS3. I just think it would be a good idea for MS to do this for its users. It certainly would be more pro-active than their lame laptop commercials.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
They know people hate Vista. They know many saw it as the last straw with Windows and switched away from Windows. They know that a lot more are clinging onto XP as if it's their only life raft in a storm. They know that each day that Vista is the current Windows is another day XP users will be tempted to switch away. By holding out the new "Windows which will deliver on all your hopes" just a little longer, that they can stay those hands from making the switch.
The same happened with the Sega Saturm / Sony Playstation. Sega got their console onto the shelves about 1 month before Sony, and console fans were split on whether to wait that little bit longer for the Playstation or buy the Saturn now. Even if the Playstation was delayed a little bit, or out of stock, the carrot was always there, dangling just out of reach but within distance.
By dangling the release in "leaks" which may change later, and making it available to a few, it appears to be very exclusive, which sends another PR message that it's "special". By holding the download window open for a short time, it forces people who want it to act within that window, meaning that it's on their minds during that time. It will translate into a flurry of astorturfing blogs which will no doubt be dugg by fellow astroturfers flaming the fires. All of which sends the message to consumers to just hold on, the cavalry is just around the corner and is on it's way to save you from Vista. All of which conveniently forgets to mention that Vista is just a different regiment under the same flag as the cavalry.
I've actually been running Vista as a primary desktop OS for about a month, after 14 years of Unix type OS as a primary desktop system (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OSX, even Solaris)
Why? It's a change. I was too comfortable with all of the Linuxes, the others weren't a good fit for an ultralight Thinkpad. If you don't force yourself to be uncomfortable now and then, you stagnate. (I do still have Fedora in a VM for quite a few things - I'm trying to make myself learn, not be a masochist)
The specific OS is Vista Business 32-bit, because that's what I had a license for (bought it with the laptop "just in case"). If I were to reinstall, I would go with a 64-bit version.
For backups, I am currently using Acronis TrueImage. Based on a test "full image restore", it works. It's primarily an image backup utility, not rsync or similar. I'm just doing routine backups to an external hard drive.
What you're asking for is actually pretty difficult under Windows, as far as I can tell; it' s far easier on Linux or OSX. On the other hand, there is something to be said for a full native Excel 2007 (sorry OOo fans, but calc is nowhere remotely close to a usable Excel replacement, including fundamental design flaws in the solver that have been there since at least 1.1)
ERROR: Null
Welcome to Redmond, where you have to be a paying member to download a free RC.
Early, or did you miss the 'Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009.' in the summary?
Then again - I just tried our MSDN login and, like the article said, there's just the old beta to download.
np: Jared Emerson-Johnson - Attack The Dog (Sam & Max Season One OST (Disc 1))
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
Just get Cygwin. Now you have rsync.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Guest post by Mary-Jo Enderle
I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION Milestone $MOCKUP.
I tried it on a low-end laptop with four Core 2 Duo chips and only 8 gig of memory, and trust me: $NEXT_VERSION is shaping up to be one heck of a product.
WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their "distros" full of all sorts of useless shovelware like "FireFox" and "OpenOffice" and, haha, "GIMP"! -- the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved $HATED user interface from Office $HATED_VERSION is now part of WordPad and Paint!
The controversial Digital Rights Management system in Vista has been worked over, with user-downloadable "tilt bits," which you can configure to your own liking. It'll require every user to supply a blood sample for DNA analysis, and the beta nearly took my finger off, but of course that's only if you want to play premium content. The Blu-Ray(tm) of Battlefield Earth was unbelievable on this operating system.
A public beta should be released by the end of this year. There's just no way that Steve "Trains Run On Time" Ballmer will miss the Christmas deadline. The final release should leave the midnight queues on Vista release day -- the street riots, the water cannons, the rubber bullets -- in the shade.
I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they're finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.
Also, there'll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It'll be awesome!
I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
SyncToy is a rather awesome free backup utility from Microsoft. Although it's relatively hard to schedule, it's very easy to use it for any number of one-way or two-way backups. I use it to back up my thumb drive and for various tasks at work.
How the hell do Windows users backup their files?
Well to make this an easy answer...
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1) Windows Backup
- You can choose User Files or a Complete volume image.
Many users do a periodic Complete backup and daily user file backups to complete a total recovery solution.
A side benefit of Windows Backup is that it also works with the Windows 'Previous Versions', which is like Time Machine on OS X, but also includes 'on volume' snapshot/copy on write archived versions of all your documents. It is also more accessible and elegant than Time Machine, as it is integrated into the Shell and even older application that have an Open or Save dialog box get access to 'previous versions' of your documents.
So in Windows Vista or Win7, you can right click on the main volume and hit previous versions and it will list all the archive points on the volume and all the backup points on your external storage device(network share etc.)
Also recovering or viewing a 'previous version' from the volume or a backup is as easily as hitting open and viewing the Folder or Volume as it looked at a particular day or time, being able to browse through the entire volume and even search it as it existed on that date and time.
No Time Machine interface needed, and even your external backups are not needed for the basic functionality as it uses the Volume Shadow features of NTFS every time you modify a file on your computer.
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2) Scripted Backups, with folder syncing, etc. Tools like Copy and XCopy have been replaced in Windows and you have RoboCopy as well as new PowerShell copy features.
RoboCopy is probably what you are looking for, as it is a complete backup and archiving tool, in addition to performing basic file copying. It does folder syncing, mirroring, etc, etc and can create a perfect copy of even the system volume with all attributes, NTFS meta data, and ACLs kept in tact that you can simply use RoboCopy again from the boot DVD in the WinPE environment to restore a volume exactly.
(WinPE is essentially NT with a generic GUI, so unlike XP, it allows NT and even Win32/64 commandline and some GUI utilities to run on what is essentially the 'MinWin' layers of NT. WinPE is also what Vista and Win7 use for setup/upgrades.)
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3) Other utilities.
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If the built in Complete Backup/User Data Backup tools or the RoboCopy utility don't provide the features you want, there are additional 'IT' scale tools in the resource kit that add even more functionality, as well as the PowerShell features.
You can even click 'install SUA' and use or compile any *nix utility you like and use it. NT doesn't care if you are using the BSD subsystem or Win32.
There are also the Win32 ports of the *nix utilities that a lot of *nix users love.
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One PS about Powershell...
PowerShell is more of a CLI for the NT architecture.
Which means it is the first CLI designed around the object based kernel architecture of NT, and unlike a *nix CLI, doesn't deal with just device I/O and text, but uses the 'object' constructs that NT is uses instead.
So Powershell can request and interact with devices and I/O on an object level as well as pass and work with objects from the NT and Win32 Subsystem that would be basic devices and textual on *nix.
i.e. It can work directly with an object and its properties at the CLI level from the NT kernel and not just textual parameters and understands NT objects in the kernel from things like the token based security of NT to even the Win32 subsystem WMI objects that create the GUI, other interfaces all the way through process and services that work with NT in object form. (This is one area NT was designed to be more advanced than UNIX, as the basic device and textual nature of the UNIX model was considered to be outdated when NT was created, and using a real 'object' model that exposed information, functions, and properties for I/O was seen as the more robust system.
Some think PowerShell is
Uhhh... yeah... Redmond the only place that offers its paying premium customers early access to its products and services before the general public.
If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now
If you have a "ThePirateBay" subscription, you can download Windows 7 RC now.
Well, next time, we're going to try their OS in a nice VM where we can test such behavior... while using Ubuntu or other choice Linux distro.
Amen. Next time I'm installing Windows is the next release that doesn't overwrite GRUB without asking.
Last I checked, you have to pay to download iPhone Beta 3.0.
rsync for Windows?
Robocopy is a free command-line tool similar to rsync that comes with Vista and is a free download for previous versions of Windows. The syntax is a little clumsy, but it works pretty well for simple backups (that is, directory replication). A free 3rd party tool that's pretty good is Cobian Backup. However there are probably hundreds of different "backup" utilities for Windows so you might want to just try a couple and see how they work for you.
PowerShell is pretty nice, certainly it's leaps and bounds better than CMD or WSH. Object-oriented and allows full access to the .NET framework which is pretty nice. Easily extensible as well by writing your own "cmdlets" (a .NET program invoked like a built-in command).
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Watch it buster. You wanna be careful who you set off around here. I suppose you think you're making a point with that remark just because it's true.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Glad to see you're joining the "I'm never installing Windows again" club.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
What's insightful about this? If I make stuff up that I can't prove, does that make me insightful?
No. It makes you Informative.
Vista never had any DRM of any kind built-in, other than the DRM support in WMP that was in XP.
Certainly nothing at all that affects copy operations in the shell. That notion is absurd (I'm a shell developer, I would know).
It's just a ridiculous myth that gets repeated on Slashdot and nowhere else.
What's insightful about this? If I make stuff up that I can't prove, does that make me insightful?
New here, eh?