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Windows 7 Will Be Free For a Year
Barence writes "Microsoft is effectively giving away Windows 7 free for a year with the launch of the Release Candidate. The Release Candidate is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and will go on unlimited, general release on 5 May. The software will not expire until 1 June 2010, giving testers more than a year's free access to Windows 7. 'It's available to as many people who see fit to use it, although we wouldn't recommend it to just your average user,' John Curran, director of the Windows Client Group told PC Pro. 'We'd very strongly encourage anyone on the beta to move to the Release Candidate.'"
Sounds like a good idea to me! Can't think of anything wrong with it, but I trust someone will come up with something.
You just got troll'd!
It's just one more step to open source! I'll start holding my breath now!
I'll give you the first one free. And if you want more, come back to me.
Well it will take me at least a year to get all my drivers updated and installed, so this really doesn't help me.
Will this include XP as a VM for a year as well?
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Even if you find a way to keep it going by hacking out the time-bomb or setting the date back you still wouldn't have a license to use the software after the 1 year expiration date comes and goes. If you're going to use unlicensed software you might as go in whole-hog and take a copy from wherever torrent sites kids hang out these days. If the penalties for software piracy scare you then consider shoplifting: first offense is community service hours, and that's only if you're caught. If the software is good enough to go through the hassle of screwing around like that then it's worth paying for. If it's not, there are perfectly servicable options from other vendors including various flavors of Linux, BeOS^WHaiku, BSD, Solaris, OS X, etc. There's no need to get your children hooked on Windows before they're in the first grade.
So you get people hooked in with a free release, then hijack them after a year with no good downgrade path and thus no access to their data (modulo switching operating systems) unless they pay up?
I'm impressed. I didn't think MS could sink any lower.
However, Curran believes that Windows 7 has already lifted much of the negativity that surrounded its predecessor. "The positive energy and momentum is quite a bit higher than it was in the Vista timeframe," Curran conceded. "People are excited about Windows 7."
Turn people off to Vista, then when they think you are done and they will never run anything Microsoft again, turn out a decent OS, or at least one better than the one before. Nothing makes this look better than how bad Vista looks.
MSDN and technet require very expensive subscriptions (never mind the absurdity of paying to test another companies apps)
and does this apply to the public beta testers who dont have the luxury of handing over thousands to test Microsofts apps ?
Your 4-year-old's account shouldn't have administrator access.
If you gave his account administrator access, neither should you.
The first hit is free
This could be Ballmer's strategy against Linux as he repeatedly has said that you can't beat Linux' price.
With this they will surely retain the market share, in a recession, for an otherwise very expensive product; it costs more than one third of a new pc.
I haven't tried it yet. Is it that good or that bad?
Free seems to me to still be too expensive to deal with M$ latest bug laden release (at least up until the first or second serious patch comes along). I didn't move from 98 to XP for my machine until SP1 came out. I wonder if they'd be willing to pay me to live through their forced release growing pains.
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
First drop a bait,next hook,line,sinker. Let someone smoke weed until they become addicted, next sell weed to them at exorbitant prices.
Your 4-year-old's account shouldn't have administrator access.
If you gave his account administrator access, neither should you.
Funny you should say that. A while ago I took my four year old daughter to a museum, and let her play with a touch-screen information terminal. In a couple of seconds she (somehow) had control panel up! It may take a thousand monkeys a million years to write Shakespeare, but it seems to take ten seconds for a four-year old to find any "backdoor access" or other options that should not be available.
My place is a microsoft-free zone. The only microsoft product I have is Flight Sim for dos 2.0 unopened and my old win 3.11 disks but they are just conversation pieces.
It's available to as many people who see fit to use it, although we wouldn't recommend it to just your average user
If this is a release candidate, they are basically admitting the end product won't be for the "average user".
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
I don't see what's new here. So the latest version will self destruct in one year, then what? Or maybe they are releasing it to the public instead of leaking it like they normally do?
Nothing here, move along. Move along. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Your next one will cost kid, but you'll thank me for it later.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
"Microsoft is effectively giving away Windows 7 free for a year with the launch of the Release Candidate.
It's only free if you don't value bug fixes, security updates, product support and potentially all manner of issues installing software that will be released for Windows 7 RTM on a pre-release version no-one will have done significant product testing on and won't care to help you with if you run into problems.
Keeping all this in mind, and the fact this is pre-release development code, it's not hard to see why this release is free. I do find it odd that it's got such a generous expiration date, but approaching this as a free (time-limited) lunch is probably a fairly bad idea for all the reasons above.
If you like it, but don't want to pay for it, just pirate it. You'll be better off, and so may many others when they don't have to worry about your compromised box congesting their network, because it was exploited by a flaw MS has no intention of fixing in pre-release code.
"freeasinshit"
The level of humour you can stuff into a tag never ceases to amaze me.
Are Microsoft trying the Linux business model? LOL
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Love Windows 7. Been using it as my primary OS since build 7000. Almost lost hope for MS with the ugly bloated overdue Vista but this one is really good. Been using the RC 64 for almost a week now and it feels solid.
You counter his argument that it is not free by pointing out it is MERELY 250 bucks a year...
Who would have thought FREE would become such a complex concept to some people.
Free == 0 bucks. No money. Nada. Zip. Zero.
If MSDN required a postal stamp it would NOT be free.
Mind you, I am not sure this RC requires a subscription in any case so you might both be blowing smoke.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So if I wanted to build an offline gaming machine for my 4 year old, I just have to keep setting the data backwards.
If by "data" you mean "date", you break games whose rules depend on the calendar. I don't know of any specific titles like this on Windows, but one on GameCube, DS, and Wii is the Animal Crossing series.
How do we make money? Volume!
So, free Windows 7 for a year? What would Frank, the Homeless Guy say about that?
Personally I'm going to hold out for Blake's 7 instead.
Absolutely love this on today's BBC article on Windows 7. "We were able to shave 400 milliseconds off the shutdown time by slightly trimming the WAV file shutdown music. "It's indicative of really the level and detail and scrutiny on Windows 7."
the last time i tried winxp (i doubt 7 will be any nicer) i made a ntfs disk partition with cfdisk while running linux on the first primary partition (/dev/sda1) 20 gigs, i rebooted with the XP disk, and it wanted to format the ntfs partition (/dev/sda1) but when i finished the installation and booted XP it completely wiped every partition on that disk which is a 500 gig disk with several partitions & another OS & lots of data on it all gone, i took that XP disk and run it through a shredder and wiped XP off that disk and restored my partitions & OS from my backup drive, fuck microsoft and the OS they rode in on if they can not play nicely with other OSs i dont want anything to do with them anymore...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Windows a gateway drug?
No it's more of a Dell drug.
This is actually a wonderful idea for them. it lowers the barrier for the transition. Even companies can push their costs forward in time.
But i'm thinking of all the pirates in asia. The street vendors with virus laden bootlegs will be competing against free. this will hurt their market. Then a year later what will the chinese consumer do? He could go out an buy a bootleg and re-install his system or he could buy a keycode and continue with his current system state. in many cases the idea of re-installing a system would be daunting enough to suddenly make the key code seem cheap.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Microsoft isn't concerned about "hooking" people. They accomplished that decades ago. Microsoft's problem is that people are hooked on XP. They spent a whackload of money on Vista, and nobody went for it. (By nobody, I mean corporations. Everybody who bought a new machine was forced to get it, but even then many switched back to XP.) Now, they've spent another whackload of money on Win7, and they want corporations to buy it. They want people to move off of the XP platform. This free windows is the bait to get them to switch.
Frankly, I don't know if it'll work. Windows XP works fine. It's an operating system. All it has to do is run applications and manage resources. It does that well enough for most people and corporations, so why switch?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
There is some free software I've been wanting to run that only works under windows... this might finally give me a reason to install Parallels on my Macbook.
'nuf said?
A Mac OS X Leopard clone, three years later?
Snow Leopard will be out soon, then wait another three years for Redmond to copy that.
So Microsoft's OS division is now reduced to copying the business plan of heroin dealers?
Why save your soul when you can sell it for a profit?
.... back in the late 1980's with Windows 3.0?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'll be nice enough to "give" Microsoft a free clue though. Nobody likes having the rug pulled out from under them. Deje Vous? This HAS happened to me before with those useless OEM re-installation disks. When the "free" installation stops running, and I have erased my older OS's which won't even reinstall, what do I do then? You guessed it, and it won't be Windows(tm).
A story about Windows is posted on Slashdot and all the comments are usless dribble about M$ being buggy and instable. I think I see a parrallel between the way the media is covering the Swine Flu and how Linux users cover Windows stories...Can we please stay on topic here...
What is the (anti)benefit of a company putting out a beta like this for a long period of time?
I installed Linux and I feel so much better now.
Dennis Leary
They're not giving you Windows 7 for free. They allow anyone to use a beta version of Windows 7 for one year. And, yes, RC is still beta. Microsoft has admitted that they falsely and intentionally label the last few betas as RCs to make hardware vendors to test their hardware and write proper drivers before a RTM build is created.
The only purpose of this /. submission is to make money on ads or something I suppose (I didn't follow any link, I confess, as I don't follow misleading and moronic articles).
Please ask her to document it. ;-)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I bet this will convince some of the PC dealers to ship with Windows 7 instead of XP.
who needs that DRM driven junk? yea go ahead give it for free to the joe six pack
I doubt it will "self destruct" - they will likely do the same thing as when Windows currently detects it is unlicensed. That is, it will disable a lot of functionality, but you will still have access to your data. After 1 year, then what? Well, either buy it or migrate your data of the machine. You're absolutely right, though. There's no real controversy here, so let's move along.
Based on the beta, if by "disable a lot of functionality" you mean, "refuse to run for more than two hours consecutively", then yeah, that's how it'll work. You'd better either have your data off there by the time it expires, or figure out how to move it in blocks of 6600 seconds.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Last I recall a MSDN license isn't free. It's actually fairly expensive but gives you access to most, if not all, of Microsoft's excellent development tools.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
What??? I see absolutely no problem with giving a kid admin access to an OFFLINE machine. Worst case scenario, you have to reimage it.
When I was four I had admin access on my TRS-80. The worst thing that happened was I ended up an engineer.
So, if MS is supposed to be releasing a new OS every couple (2) years and it's SOP to RC them for free for a year... doesn't that mean that we get free MS Windows (RC)? I'll get nailed for this, but really most linux distro's are RC's, too ('LTS' version or the paid version being the actual product).
So, hey, short of 'Free (as in speech),' and 'Open Source' MS is definitely learning from FOSS. hehe. The new MS tagline: It's 'Free (as in beer)' and it's 'software.' So, we're halfway to the FOSS ideal! (j/k)
You'd better either have your data off there by the time it expires, or figure out how to move it in blocks of 6600 seconds.
Or just do what you'd do if any Windows install won't boot - run any Linux Live CD/USB key and use that to copy the data to wherever.
Um, they did the same thing with Vista. The RC was public and came with a year expiration also.
Not only that, but going to the launch expos they had across the country, they passed out free Vista "RTM" discs (confusing because it was not the actual OEM or retail disc) with another year license (plus a full license to Office 2k7).
"We'd very strongly encourage anyone on the beta to move to the Release Candidate."
Well, you heard him, Vista users. Time to upgrade.
No, it's just that Microsoft figured out how to make even more profit. They started by shipping product that wasn't ready for market. They had started shipping BETA product and everyone knew that you didn't actually USE microsoft till SP1 of the next version.
Now they realize, why bother having your own staff even do the ALPHA testing. That's expensive. Just "give" away your half-complete code for a year, let your customers debug it, then terminate their "license" and then force them to LEASE the BETA version, which still won't actually be production ready till SP1.
The microsoft model:
Step 1. Profit
Step 2. Profit
Step 3. Profit
...when you give something away for free, and people don't want it anyway. ^^
(Ignore their obviously coming "OMFG! It sells like crazy!!1!one(lim x->0 ((sin x)/x))" messages. They did that with Vista too. And look how it turned out.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
...they will pay me to install Windows on my box. I might be interested in that.
Reply to That ||
Well, looks like now we've got Free as in Beer, Free as in Gratis, and Free as in Crap.
Maybe I'm just being overly paranoid, but I think I'll stick to the tried and true path of waiting until Service Pack 1 comes out before I decide whether or not to switch.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I'm quite impressed with it.
It's a huge step up from vista.
I particularly like the action center.
They're using their grammar skills there.
wow, they just relabel end user testing "free release" and it's somehow different.
this is gonna be fun, consumers will want a real 1.0 and when this beta code eats all of grammas photos there will be a backlash
Those guys are really desperate
There... fixed that for you.
Please don't buy an Apple or upgrade from XP to Ubuntu :)
davecb5620@gmail.com
Actually, Windows uses a finer-grained permission set for the control panel. Limited users (not sure that she was actually running as a limited user) can open almost all control panel items and change a goodly number of them. This is totally logical, since there is no reason to lock a limited user out of changing her mouse speed or desktop background, screen resolution, keyboard preferences ......
If she was running as a limited user, she would not have been able to change any essential settings even if she had read access to the control panel items containing those setting.
Then don't, enjoy your crappy linux desktop and software.
I've been trying for a couple of hours to get into the downloads section of MSDN and I keep getting the, "Sorry, we were unable to service your request" message. So somebody must be downloading it. Or maybe they are limiting access to make it appear that there is a larger demand than really is... Who knows with them.
Microsoft already had me at "Mark Russinovich is windows 7 principal architect".
I was given that 'june 1st' date, but it was supposed to be june 1st 2009, not 2010.
Background goes black on june 1st, and starting july 1st, reboot each two hours. (insert bluescreen joke here)
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
jesus, you guys need to stop bashing microsoft so much, well atleast the people that haven't tried win 7. It's really nice! I had vista installed on an old laptop (1.5ghz celeron m with 1gb of ram) and it was unusable (it scored a 2.0 on the experience thing), even with the classic UI it was so slow it made me want to toss the laptop in the microwave. But then I installed windows 7 build 7066 on it and it's wonderful. I've got full aero ui and all the goodies running, and it's fast. real fast. Even faster than xp was on the same machine. Infact it outperforms my backup desktop (Athlon 64 4600+ dual core with 3gb of ram) which is running vista. AND ALL THIS IS ON A BETA WITH ALL THE DEBUG SYMBOLS! When 7 is running release code it's going to be super fast! I have yet to encounter anything that I don't like about windows 7. I'm not an M$ fan boy. Infact I hate ALL OS's. But for this release of windows I think you should try it before you even think about saying one negative thing about it.
Until Microsoft gives up their highly restrictive licensing policies, I will be quite happy with XP. I still run 98 on the computer at school and it gives me less trouble than the one at home! Even a free upgrade isn't worth what it would inevitably cost me for hardware and software just to keep running the programs I am already familiar with. If Microsoft wants to change the face of computing, all they need to do is use the energy they put into marketing, for a more long sighted vision of what the future of computing really should be. It was Bill Gates who stated publicly that no one would ever need more than one megabyte of Ram, and that the internet is just a fad. The bottom line is that Windows HAS to keep changing the way people think about computing, otherwise it could not keep reselling itself over and over again. There is a word for a person or entity that offers you something for free, and then requires that you pay through the nose once you get used to having it: Pusher!
10 Bang head against screen.
20 Goto 10
30 ???
40 Profit
"Hey customer! Forget about that DRM thingie we snuck in last version and look at how much better Windows 7 is than Vista! Never mind all those pesky little compatible issues, we give you two OS to fix, hunt for malware and upgrade by shipping XP inside Windows 7! Now that you have crappy Vista to benchmak against instead of XP Windows 7 will look almost bearable!"
Brilliant! The really sad part is that many ppl will swallow this hook line and sinker. Good for them as long as i can keep it off any computer i touch.
HTTP/1.1 400
I can vision pirates already preparing to crack the expiration date and so it never expires, just like Vista..
First you say:
I see absolutely no problem
and then you say:
I ended up an engineer
Seems like a dire enough consequence to me.
Pure horseshit. Free is forever, and nothing else.
Mod me down, you pussies!!! Bad Karma, I have more karma
built up based upon the years of my life, that most of you will EVER have!
My 3 yr old has been playing gcompris on the linux desktop I set up for the kids since she was 2. It started with the push the ball to tux thing and colored duck games. One day she was playing the alphabet train game and was getting 80% or so correct... She found the game on her own, figured out the rules, and was gettin g80% of her letters correct at 2 1/2 years old. Then I came by another time and she was doing the shape matching and puzzle games very successfully. She "fails" more when we are watching just because she likes our reaction when we tease her. Those little monsters just learn WAY too fast.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
When my youngest was 2 or 3, she was able to shutdown an XP machine with a couple of keystrokes with or without metakeys. I still don't know how she did it.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
They will probably offer a free 7-UPgrade to anyone who has a legit copy of Vista. It makes too much business sense. Vista will become an albatross support burden. Giving away bits-on-a-wire to all those who bought Vista and even paid more to downgraded to XP will create some goodwill and begin to phase out older versions of the OS. If XP continues to have a huge installed base as W2K did, Microsoft will be forced to support it longer. That draws resource$ away from new products. They would probably save the 7-UP distribution costs in six months. Of course, I am talking about Microsoft, a company that seems to be living in its own reality distortion zone. Therefore, they might force people who bought Vista to pay MORE for a 7-UPgrade and tell people who downgraded to XP that they must buy an X-Box to get Win7. They also might sue anyone who criticizes them - hold on, there's someone at the door - HEY YOU CAN'T COME IN HERE.......
http://andrewgentle.com/newsblog/archives/dilbert-the-knack-video/
Post's titles keep getting worse and worse. By that I mean totally untrue.
Is M$ giving Windows 7 free for a year? NO!
Why can't the editors use something like "Windows 7 RC Will Only Expire in 2010" ... or something that doesn't mislead readers into believing M$ is really giving up on sales for 1 full year.
I am sure almost no one is using Windows in any variety because they love Windows itself, they use Windows because they don't have any other fucking choice (as far as they are concerned). The typical user probably doesn't even know what OS they are using, and would be unable to name another one. Windows came on their computer, and they use it because they assume all computers use windows. Witness the stunned expression on people's faces when they see Mac OS/X for the first time.
The typical windows user wants their OS to let them run the programs they want. If they are a professional that means MS Office, if they are a gamer that means their games, the OS is merely a necessary evil that gets in the way, and nothing more than that. I doubt most users give it much of a thought
That said, why would anyone want to buy a NEW OS for $150-$300 when what they have is still working? Why would any business want to spend $10,000 - $100,000 on new seat licenses when what they have is still working?
Previous versions of Windows were shitty enough everyone could see the point in upgrading to something that remotely approached stability, but XP more or less achieved that goal. Now the only way most people get Vista is because it came with their computer. Even then a lot of people want XP instead and will pay for that option because they have learned that Vista has a shitty rep. Thats pretty amazing when you think about it because the average user is amazingly ignorant about their computer. My mother in law constantly refers to her desktop case as "The Hard Drive" - because that's the one term that sunk in. She is anything but a stupid woman, and I think its just that overall the details on her computer matter to her about as much as whether or not her TV remote can mute the sound. Its just one more appliance she uses to cruise the net and look for stuff about knitting
This is a very smart move on MS part I think, the only thing smarter would be for them to just give Windows 7 away period, at least a fully capable home version. Don't bother selling it at all. Everyone who wants to can run it, everyone thus continues to support all those companies who produce windows software and thus stay hooked to the same crack. MS Office can continue to generate the income that MS wants. Whats the incentive for the typical user to switch to Linux if they can get the full home version of Windows 7 for free as well?
Its not like MS needs the additional income, they could probably give away all of their software for a decade before they started running low on cash
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
ALT+F4 at the Desktop will issue the shutdown command.
/.'s 10 Millionth
More of a "+1 tragically funny" I guess. You can reinstall grub from a live cd.
Definately is not "libre" as in open source. Definately is not "gratis" as in free beer.
Sometimes english is not enough to explain a concept.
But still... free with expiration date isnt free/gratis/libre/whatever, is just delayed payment.
Or at least this says what I've been trying to say for the past few years. Getting drivers for Windows is something you do once and then never again. Stop press: There's far greater likelihood that your hardware will have a Windows driver than a Linux driver.
Get over it already ! Sheesh.
The jokes about Windows drivers, reinstalling Windows and rebooting many times are just plain wrong, lazy and unfunny these days. The class clowns who crack these 'jokes' and the chorus of hangers-on in the gallery who mod them up should really take a while to reassess their sense of humor (and their source of facts about current technology).
Oh, and yes I am a paid MS shill; I get $10 per pro-MS posting to /. After all, there's no other possible reason to prefer Windows over Linux and state it in public, is there ?
RC1 of Windows Server 2008 R2 also went live on TechNet and MSDN today...
Apple owned 90% of the market.
Netscape owned 90% of their market.
Intuit Quicken owned 90% of their market.
Basically, lots of company can own it. Holding it is hard. If the monopoly with OS-Office gets broken, then MS will likely lose that 90% desktop.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is a win/win situation for Microsoft.
First, they get to have people install their OS for a year - call it Vista upgraders. It's a suckerpunch, though, because after that year expires, those people are essentially forced to upgrade to the 'official' W7, or go back to Vista with significant headache. (Oh, the upgrade process from the RC to the final will be easy, rest assured.) Bait, meet hook.
Second, they get to offer their flagship product (and it is their flagship product, at this point) for 'free' - ie, completely without any support, most likely, on account of its RC status. Chances are they will, however, release updates for it, making it more like a traditional product launch.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Gateway THUG or gateway PUG, or even more scary... gatway to mslug (ms linux users' group)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The real reason Vista & v7 won't get adopted is because of technology.
Win95 -> 32bit CPU support
Win98 -> Proper 32bit support
WinNT -> SMP
Win2k -> Active Directory *
WinXP -> USB
Vista & v7 -> 64bit
-Yes Win98 did support USB but it was VERY buggy and required 3rd party drivers to make work.
-It is true that AD was an "MS idea (copied from Novell)" but it made Big Companies much happier then NT did.
-Average users don't need 64bit yet. That is why the uptake isn't there yet. The one feature that XP should have had out of the box *proper CD/DVD burning* is now in Vista/v7, but people are already trained to use a 3rd party app to do that.
There is no "must-have" technology that requires people to upgrade, therefore they won't.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
What they really need is to get people to stop replacing it with an older version, and to stop trying to get the older one on their new hardware.
Vista is approaching a 25% share of the market.
Top Operating System Share Trend
It's easy to imagine a 10% decline in XP's share and a 10% increase in Vista's share May-to-May.
The geek looks in the mirror and thinks that he is representative of the mass consumer market.
The HP desktop from WalMart is quad core and ships with 6 GB RAM and 64 Bit Vista. In six months - nine months, whatever - it will be an i7 with 9 GB RAM.
Serious horsepower at a mass market price. Mature 64 bit drivers. Win 7 just around the corner.
What's not to love?
Dual-core is Coming Soon to a netbook near you. It won't be long before XP stops making sense even at entry level.
how many people who are seeming falling for it.
MS has always "given away" its betas and RCs so they can get beta testers who work for free. This is MS doing business as usual, not some new kind of generosity.
Windows Key, U, U ... on most systems, without a software package beginning with 'U' in the start menu.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I don't know what the relevant stats are to be honest, but I'm pretty sure that some 80% to 90% of software development these days is for web based apps, i.e. backend and browser. People got burnt so often by developing for propietry platforms in the past, and I don't only mean Microsoft by that, that I think that client OS development is truly becoming somewhat irrelevant.
Microsoft knows this and tried so many times to lock people into its own web platform technologies, be that ActiveX, IE, Silverlight, XAML etc. But it never worked. The web is no longer Microsoft's backyard and people are tired of being forced to either cow to Microsoft, Apple or Adobe.
Personally, I'm glad and it's abaout time.
409 comments as of 03:10:07 EST, and I'm the only one to notice the "to / too" issue in tagline?
And the Grammar Nazi Award goes to...
I'll be firing up the virtual pc this evening and messing around on it:
Here is the all 32bit versions dist I found with the highest seeds. D/L rate at just under 1 Meg /s.
http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4866918/Windows_7_Build_7100_RC_x86_(32bit)_-_All_Editions.4866918.TPB.torrent
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
Wow, seriously? The entire operating system stops while it plays the shutdown sound? I would have thought the sound data could be spit out to the sound card to play autonomously while the operating system cleaned up. But maybe that's just a fantasy from an old Amiga user. Or at least the sound could be given its own thread for the CPU to run while it's waiting for disk IO.
Free "for a year" is NOT free.
Yours In Communism,
Kilgore Trout
Sure, that's what Microsoft keeps saying about these issues too. But at some point, I think a commercial OS maker has to "take charge" of things. If a major vendor keeps producing products that make your OS look bad, you either DO something to address it, or you suffer from their continual screw-ups.
Why do you think MS bundles so many drivers with the OS itself? They realize what a piss-poor user experience it is, when you install Windows, only to be greeted by a VGA 640x480 display in 16 colors, no sound, no working modem or NIC card, etc. By the same token, the user experience is just as piss-poor AFTER the OS is installed and working with the hardware built into the PC, if other (often expensive) peripherals malfunction with it.
meanwhile, linux is free for eternity.
I think people are just reacting wrong to the whole thing. Is it marketing? Of course, they are a big business trying to make money.
As a software developer I relish the opportunity to look at new software for free. And if you give it a chance, you might actually be surprised. I'm also a huge gamer, and it plays all of my games with much better performance than I saw in Vista and XP.
The answer to this question is very, very simple. Knowledge/experience/equipment for growing cannabis is a lot easier to find and implement than growing tobacco, which means that if cannabis were completely legalized everyone would grow their own. Which means it wouldn't be taxed.
The government (Australian, American, Canadian, etc) honestly doesn't care if you smoke yourself to death. Or get wasted on weed. Really. They just care about taxing you.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Hmm. Who else uses this sort of business model? Get 'em hooked then start charging?
They tried the same thing with Office 2007. Nothing Microsoft offers is ever FREE. (as in beer or the other sort)
Just sayin'.
There's no need to get your children hooked on Windows before they're in the first grade.
yes there is: video games.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Which means we are only Windows 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5 and 8 years away from a really sweet OS.
It's Unix - she knows this!
they'll just go to the market and buy a bootleg for 40 rupees
So are we going to see Zelda players farm Dollars and trade them for real-world money? :)
Don't they make a great deal of money from forcing people who buy prebuilt computers to take a paid for copy of Windows with it? I can't see Dell, HP, Toshiba et al selling their computers with a beta OS.
If you want to be a pathetic niche
But I like Beethoven's Pathétique, you insensitive clod!
So, if Linux is going to make any inroads into this small but important market
Why is this market important? To what end is it important to make inroads in this market?
Is it because all the media production people are rabid $OS fanboys for the subjectively best value of OS, and so they'll help convert others? ;)
Or... please explain. Thank you :)
The public beta will be out May 5th
Which happens to be the day of the year when the WWII Nazis officially lost their control over Denmark (actually May 4th, late evening, but we celebrate on May 5th).
Not wanting to Godwin the thread or anything, but this invites so many jokes...
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" ;)
See also http://xkcd.com/528/
iamhigh> I have stopped [smoking weed] for years when necessary with no trouble.
You off the weed right now?
If you like it, but don't want to pay for it, just pirate it.
Watch out! The Swedish chapter of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry might sue you for accessory to copyright infringement!
Right, but that brings up the "Standby, Turnoff, Restart" menu. If you press Enter after that, you go into standby.
I've seen her bang on the keyboard, and the machine just shut down, gracefully, with no prompting. More than once...
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
I'll try that on my work machine, but my home machine, an Inspiron 1100 laptop, doesn't have a Windows key, and neither does the Model M plugged into it.
I'll check the manual. Perhaps some combination of Ctrl, Fn, and Alt will stand in for the Windows key.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Dear Bill and Steve,
You all still haven't gotten it yet have you. I will not use your piece of shit operating system even if you are giving it away until you fix the friggin basic security holes in it.
why I use Linux ans Solaris has nothing to do with them being free. They work, they're secure and they're stable. Plus they have been 64 bit for years.
Thank you for your time.
It is not so much about the OS as in that year the user will be installing applications and becoming dependent on the solution (hardware,OS,software,training). After a year's worth of data, shortcuts, email, and data, people may not want to change and buying a license may seem easier than the alternatives. A year goes by fairy fast, then its credit card time. You buy the license, and shortly thereafter, a new OS appears. Brilliant.
NTFS 3G + SATA/USB external drive enclosure
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Ctrl-Esc loads the start menu, similarly to the Windows key.
Ctrl-Esc, U, U in that case.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)