Windows 7 BETA

[Panda On Smack]

just installed it on my old inspiron 8200 and it stayed on expanding files (0%) for ages but eventually got going and all is fine now

seems pretty good even on this relic

 

[TdC]

ye gods the bandwidth o0 it maxed out my 10Mbit the whole way through the download!

 

[strangely brown]

Win7 beta installer

The Win7 beta installer caused me no end of grief. I have an older laptop with a promise fasttrack 378 controller in it, and I tried to install from scratch (i.e. blank HDs).

Tried to load up the driver (both supplied and more recent ones I found on the interweb) and although the installer recognised the driver and loaded it, it could not create the system partition. Tried it in both RAID and in ATA mode and the installer just wouldn't have it (another wasted evening).

In the end, I had to restore an old XP image, and then install Win 7 over it (it didn't mind doing this!). To be fair, in this situation, the Win 7 does tidy up and moves the XP stuff to a windows.old folder that was nice and easy to nuke afterwards. But the point is that I shouldn't have to do this.

Maybe I should be blaming Promise who don't seem to have released a "proper" Vista driver, although once you have Vista or Win7 installed, the XP driver seems to work fine...

Regs,
SB.

 

[Embattle]

ye gods the bandwidth o0 it maxed out my 10Mbit the whole way through the download!

You mean you stopped dling Tiddles special clips long enough for it too?

 

[TdC]

yes, in fact, there is no BT pr0n stream going on at all o0

 

[Jimmy]

just got it installed and its running quite smothly while i type this

inpressed so far runs all my games even in beta ...looking good

 

[dysfunction]

Latest version of Windows 7 has been leaked out in the usual places. Build 7100 which I believe is an RC version...

 

[Cyradix]

This version will be released by Microsoft to the public on May 5th. (M$ stated the RC will be build 7100)

 

[ford prefect]

I'm using Build 7100 full time now. Almost all the bugs are gone now - was having a slight USB issue on earlier releases, but all fixed now.

Have to say this release feels like what vista should have been but never was, much imrpoved and very fast.

 

[dysfunction]

This build is going to be free to use with the Beta keys until June 2010 as far as I am aware!

 

[Dark Orb Choir]

how can i tell when my 6 months is up??

 

[ford prefect]

This build is going to be free to use with the Beta keys until June 2010 as far as I am aware!

Yes I have heard that too, but then I saw this article yesterday:

Windows 7 to launch on 23 October | News | TechRadar UK

So not so sure.

 

[Cyradix]

Yeah, been using the RC release for almost a week now and haven't had a single crash/bug/performance issue/whatever...
Have the 32 bit version running on my work laptop and the 64bit version at home and both are very very stable.
There seems to be a lot more driver support available via windowsupdate now too. It detected most of my hardware correctly and accepted the vista drivers for the bits that weren't....

 

[ford prefect]

Anyone gone down the upgrading from vista > 7 path?

I have used clean installs so far, but have a vista laptop I'm thinking of putting it on, just wondered how clean the upgrade is? (not one of windows strong points historically).

 

[dysfunction]

Yes the RC version definitely expires on 1 June 2010...
And you can get your copy directly from Microsoft...

Windows 7 Release Candidate Customer Preview Program


Although:

Watch the calendar. The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010. You’ll also need to install the programs and data that you

 

[TdC]

Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start.

you're kidding right? this is like...kindergarten level annoyance ffs :/

 

[Ch3tan]

Nearly a year for free though, for MS that is unheard of.

 

[TdC]

that's true. I'm looking forwards to installing it on teh lappy

 

[Cadelin]

you're kidding right? this is like...kindergarten level annoyance ffs :/

Its annoying but its probably necessary. There will be people who install windows 7 and then store files etc on the harddisk. If once the free period was up you simply couldn't use windows 7 without paying for it alot of people would lose files and Microsoft might find themselves in legally uncertain territory. By shutting down every 2 hours the system becomes virtually impossible to do anything useful on but it still allows you to move files to somewhere easier to access. That's my guess as to why it is setup like that.

 

[Kryten]

A good idea IMO. They're being overly generous doing this at all, and they've give people a licence to use an OS free for very nearly a year. An OS that is more complete and far better than Vista and miles ahead of XP in development and ability terms. Also miles ahead of OSX in intuitiveness and useability.

They've struck gold with the public beta and RC, it's given them a huge amount of good publicity, which of course wouldn't have happened had it been a shoddy product. Been installed here a week and I'm very, very impressed with everything about it.

 

[MYstIC G]

Nearly a year for free though, for MS that is unheard of.

Gotta do something to undo the dent Vista caused in most peoples minds.

 

[Ch3tan]

See I didn't start using Vista until after the first service pack, so for me vista was a vast improvement over XP. If 7 is anything like Vista, then for me it will be great. Just need a blank dvd so I can install the damned thing now.

 

[old.user4556]

See I didn't start using Vista until after the first service pack, so for me vista was a vast improvement over XP. If 7 is anything like Vista, then for me it will be great. Just need a blank dvd so I can install the damned thing now.

Agreed, Vista is a huge improvement over XP for me.

Anyone know if there is a defacto Vista -> 7 upgrade path?

Would be nice if I could upgrade my Vista 32bit to Windows 7 64 bit with minimal fuss.

 

[Kryten]

32bit to 64bit I believe requires a fresh install. Could well be wrong though...

 

[ford prefect]

32bit to 64bit I believe requires a fresh install. Could well be wrong though...

Yes it does, The upgrade will only do 32 to 32 or 64 to 64bit.

Edit: Oh and bare in mind Windows 7 doesn't have a default email client.

 

[Embattle]

That is no real problem since if you only used the default mail program you could easily get away with webmail.

 

[soze]

7 is a great improvement and for people worrying about how it runs i have it on my Netbook and it is fine just a little slower than XP Pro.

So far my favorite things at home are Libraries and Streaming at work its the handling of VPN connections getting rid of the 5 minute wait is a blessing

 

[TdC]

ffs it uses a different disklabel? it refuses to install on my lappy unless I take the recovery partition off and relable it to something called EFI?

 

[Syri]

just installed RC1, mixed bag in terms of first impressions.
The good:-
Quick install, and a lot less annoying. Select English UK once, and it uses UK for everything! no more "oh, you're in the uk, but you're using a US keyboard, aren't you? and you want usa time zones too!". Not much customisation for the installer though, but then, windows has never really been big on that.
Not had any problems installing things. Drivers, it found pretty much everything, only things missing were my ralink wireless lan, and my x-fi. downloaded drivers for both, all good.
It's quick... really quick. startup time is quicker than xp, though that might be related to my xp install having over 2 years of crap built up, though i do keep it well cleaned in terms of what gets installed and runs at startup. Alt-tabbing, starting games etc, all going quicker than xp though.

The bad
Default settings are a bit too... big, for me anyway. big icons, big, simple icons on control panel, big start menu icons, big taskbar... first thing I did, shrink everything!
Lots of things have been moved or renamed compared to xp. Doesn't really affect what you can do, but you have to re-learn where things are. Annoying...

Overall though, I'm quite impressed so far. Only a few small annoyances, and that's mostly from the Vista side that's carried over. It's managed to lose a lot of the major downsides for vista though, especially performance related. When I tried vista on this pc, it was sluggish, and gaming was noticably below xp's level. Maybe SP1 will have changed that a bit, I don't know, but I can happily say that 7 is a lot better.
Just for the record btw, the pc I tested on is as follows:
Pentium D 2.8 (dual core P4)
intel 945 chipset
2gb DDR2 533
Radeon HD 4670 512mb
Soundblaster x-fi extreme music

windows experience benchmark returned the following:
CPU: 4.6
Memory: 5.2
Graphics (games and aero): 5.9
Hard disk: 5.8

going to try using it as my primary OS now, see how it goes in the long term.

 

[Ctuchik]

But more than likely less problems than some folks have with Vista
It's a very solid and stable release, slightly surprisingly, takes half the installed space that Vista Basic does (this is Ultimate, remember!) and runs quicker than XP on most decent machines. Well worth a look for those with a little time and curiosity running spare.

agreed. windows 7 is kicking Vistas arse so bad i cant believe they actually released that piece of shit OS.

this time i'm actually happy to give M$ my money