Using Windows 7 RC? Pay Up Or Auto Shutdown Warned

CWmike writes with a warning that free preview copies of Windows 7 in the wild will start nagging users to pay up in a couple of weeks until ultimately shutting down the PC altogether in a month. "Microsoft unveiled the schedule for Windows 7 Release Candidate's retirement in May 2009, when it issued the early look to the public. At the time, it said Windows 7 RC would expire June 1, 2010. Before that date, however, users are to receive warnings of the impending end. Starting on Feb. 15, Windows 7 RC will display notices every few hours that the machine will periodically shut down beginning on March 1. As of March 1, PCs running Windows 7 RC will automatically shut down every two hours. Those shutdowns will come without warning."

Comments

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

BFD. You didn't pay for it, and it's Microsoft. What do you expect?

Re:Really?

[sopssa]

And you just couldn't read a few words more to understand the whole thing and that it starts to shutdown every two hours on March? The original warning about that wasn't that it works until June, it was that on March it starts to shutdown every two hours, and finally on June it will stop booting. That's three months for you to take your files and settings and update. Stop being so freaking difficult.

I know it's the usual thing to badmouth MS on slashdot, but everyone knew it was going to expire and you would need to update.

Without warning?

[mythosaz]

Uh, it's going to notify you... ...that's warning.

..so?

[monoi]

Unless they're also going to disable booting an Ubuntu install DVD, I don't see how anyone could have a problem with this. Windows is a commercial product. If you don't want to pay for it, use one of the entirely credible free alternatives.

Re:..so?

[jmorris42]

> Windows is a commercial product.

Exactly right. Bootleg Windows is the #1 competition to Linux. So if ya want to bring about "The Year of the Linux Desktop" helping Microsoft turn the screws on unlicensed installs is probably the most productive thing a non-coder can do. Especially outside the US.

Re:..so?

[Rogerborg]

Well, the first one is always free.

Re:..so?

[jmorris42]

> Three stories the geek will studiously ignore:

We don't ignore them, we understand them to be unimportant. Please take your astroturf campaign somewhere people won't call you out and laugh.

> Microsoft revealed that it had sold over 60 million Windows 7 licenses through the second quarter.

So what? Just means that after a couple of YEARS of pent up demand because of the Vista fiasco retailers had a decent Xmas selling season for PCs despite the generally crappy economy. Almost none of those 7 licenses were actual retail sales in the normal meaning of the word. Yes, we all understand the Microsoft tax still exists despite multiple consent decrees so every PC sale is also a Windows sale. But those would have been Vista sales a year ago and XP before that. Hell, about half the netbooks this Xmas were still XP. And to be able to show a increase in revenue they had to jack the OEM pricing on 7 oretty steep. That is a longterm opportunity for the Penguin Army.

> Apple's Aug. 28 release of its Snow Leopard...

Meh. At least most Apple users DO upgrade when a new OS ships instead of waiting for their next system purchase to get it rammed down their throat whether they want/like it or not. But Apple is just a niche player and their business model requires them to remain a niche player. Unlike His Steveness who only aspires to be a cult leader, we want "World Domination"

> For the last day in January Windows 7 Breaks 10% in Daily Tracking.

You say that like you guys in Redmond are proud of it or something. It is a sign of a saturated market. Odds are over half of that 10% was people getting a new machine for Xmas because the penetration numbers for 7 before that was still fairly small. Compare and contrast to Win95's release and deployment rate. That was a product people really wanted enough to suffer through the pain of upgrading.

Windows 7 (Professional 64bit) is actually pretty good, I got it forcefed on a new laptop (but it runs F12 99% of the time) and it mostly works. Both W7 and Fedora screw up some aspects of hot docking, each failing to deal with the external display having a different resolution in different ways. W7 blows up Firefox; every launch throws three error dialogs before settling down and running. F12 instead throws the abrt-tool every time FF closes. Meh, a pox on em all. Bottom line, after seeing W7 it is OK as far as Windows goes. I ordered the XP restore disc just in case I decided W7 blows goats but didn't end up using it. Would I upgrade a working Windows XP PC to it? Why? I can't answer that question and I'd bet you can't either. Since Vista has had some service pack love I'm not even certain I'd recommend spending good money taking an otherwise working Vista install up to 7.

Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

This should not be a surprise to anyone. Why is this news?

That is probably their main target

[Sycraft-fu]

People who've forgotten or being lazy. Not only do they want your cash, but supporting prerelease software is a recipe for problems. They'd like to phase it out and not patch it.

I'm glad there's no bias in the reporting on /.

[anomnomnomymous]

Nice post there: Completely devoid of any bias towards Microsoft/Windows...

Ok, let me turn off my sarcasm-mode first.

So why the negative article about this? All the users knew beforehand that the free trial would end one day: Saying that it's "nagging" the user to pay up, is nothing more than using some fine choice of words to make it look bad on Microsoft.
Seriously, there's lots of other stuff that you can slack MS for, and you have to do it for this?
Also, you got to love the 'it will shutdown without a warning'... but it warns you from the 15th of February...

Next up: Adobe nags the users after one month of using their trial software. Oh, the horror!

Re:What's different?

[swanzilla]

I see where you are going there...

In all honesty, when was the last time you saw a BSOD? I have been running XP at work with 100% uptime for years, and for quite a while kept a Vista dual-boot for streaming media at home with no issues. At least tout the merits of something superior w/o resorting to tired anti M$ rhetoric.

Ask Slashdot:

[countertrolling]

Do you expect people to get upset over this? What, are they expecting it to just keep on going? My copy never got out of the virtual box. It's just there to figure out how to learn WTF. Come March.. or February, or whenever, whoopee! 25gb freed up.. for the hacked copy.. just kidding. No name, home made boxes with XP are a booming business right now. 7 is still a giant kludge. It's like Microsoft wants people to switch. Seems to be working.. Lots more Macs in my neighborhood.

Windows 7 networking woes

[HycoWhit]

Count me as one of the people seeing the nag screens... Installed Ultimate edition 32-bit, have a license of Professional 64-bit. So at some point I am going to have reload the OS. Just not sure it if will be Win 7 Pro-64 or back to XP.

Biggest problem with Windows 7 has been the network performance. On a gigabyte network I can not get better than 100mbs performance, while the Linux and XP machines perform as expected. To make matters worse, the network appears to spike and disconnect itself at random times. Streaming a video from the Windows 7 machine and surfing the web will produce stutters. Talked with a buddy that is a a major account TAM--apparently the networking issue has been well known since the RC and affects nVidia and Intel chipsets. My question to him--so what chipsets does that leave unaffected?

I really tried to like Windows 7 but the more I try to like the more I find thinking Ubuntu is the way to go...

So what?

[markdavis]

So what? Are there people stupid enough to think that a demo version of any software will run forever without nagging and shutting down, or going into limp mode? This is a completely stupid article totally unworthy of being posted on Slashdot.

If you want a legal, free, [modern] OS without nagging or shutting down, install Linux, BSD, or OpenSolaris. Otherwise, pay up or shut up!

Slashdot moderation flaws

[heffrey]

What a truly lame story. The biggest flaw with the moderation system is that I can't use my mod points to moderate on the actual stories as well as the comments!

Re:What's different?

[Sowelu]

Only time my computer's ever crashed since I installed XP was when my secondary drive suffered a head crash. I'm sure someone will tell me that Linux could have kept running, because hey, it wasn't even the root drive. But I can't say I really care.

Re:Oh wow!

[shutdown -p now]

I get to pay ...

You don't. You are free to take your money elsewhere - say, to Apple - or keep them to yourself and install some free Linux distro.

Of course, you might want to ask yourself why so many people are willing to fork out the cash for an "operating system that consistently breaks". Perhaps your last Windows experience, circa 2001 (a scarred WinME user?), is a tad outdated, don't you think?

Re:It's a good thing.

[Malc]

I don't know why this is even a story. It's a total waste of bandwidth. This shutdown is part of the deal of using the RC. Maybe there are people out there who downloaded it off bittorrent without realising it was limited, but then that's their own stupid fault.

Re:Hi, I'm a PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Try NOT running it in a VM, or try running it in a decent virtual machine, VMWare works fine, and if that fails, your shit is broken. I have 7 installed in several VMs (all vmware) and on several laptops and desktops. No problems. Your shit is broken, don't blame MS.