View Full Version : Windows 7 (beta 1)
Ok. After a bit of hassle getting the product key of MS I've installed the Windows 7 beta.
So far I'm very impressed. Installation was fast and painless, it feels like a much more refined faster version of Vista and I love it.
Anyone else having a play?
NokkonWud
10-01-2009, 18:07
Is it free?
Public beta was due yesterday but they've put it back a little bit so they can throw more resource behind the servers apparently. Been on MSDN and Technet since mid-week.
Reports so far have been very favourable, surprisingly in terms of performance. One of the design goals for 7 was to run comfortably on the same basic hardware requirements as Vista, but it seems to be outperforming it - which is nice.
Yes it's free and still perfectly accessible. Managed to nab a copy of it this morning.
Things to note: 1) It's a beta. They've already made significant progress (reportedly) since the version that's been released.
2) It's a limited time period piece of software. It'll work up until August 1st but after that it'll stop.
How to get it:
32 bit: http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso
64 bit: http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.ISO
To get your beta key you really need a passport account (e.g. hotmail account)
Go to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx and at the top right corner select "Sign On", then log in using your passport/hotmail account details. Now choose the appropriate link to get your key:
32 bit: https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/gcs.aspx?Product=tn-win7-32-ww&LCID=1033
64 bit: https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/gcs.aspx?Product=tn-win7-64-ww&LCID=1033
You might need to refresh those pages a few times.
N.B Just to emphasis, this is beta software. DO NOT trust anything important to beta software. There is one bug that has already been identified with Windows 7 that means if you use it to access MP3 files it can accidentally corrupt them. Apply this bug patch (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/961367) but expect potentially many more data or file affecting bugs.
Woooooo 100KB/s on those links.
Tempted to try a torrent but none will have any seeds :S
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4602971/Microsoft.Windows.7.Beta.1.Build.7000.x86.DVD-GENUiNE.iMAGE
ISO.File.....: 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso
MD5..........: f9dce6ebd0a63930b44d8ae802b63825
Seems to be the same ISO file...
only 1MB/sec here :(
will have to try and find a spare partition to put this on :)
Admiral Huddy
12-01-2009, 11:55
Installed on one of my workshop PCs but not had time to have a play yet.
A nice look over at ars (http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/windows-7-beta.ars/6), I like a lot of what he says, particularly on UAC:
One of the bigger annoyances with UAC was that it somewhat second-guessed the user by asking them to confirm actions that they'd already (implicitly) confirmed. For example, if an Administrator started up regedit or Computer Management, they'd be asked to confirm what they were doing. "Well duh, of course I want to let that program run—that's why I just started it".
Windows 7 provides a resolution for this situation. In Windows 7, user-initiated actions are distinguished from software-initiated actions. If the action is user-initiated (such as clicking a button in Control Panel) then by default, Administrator-level users don't receive any prompting; the action just happens. If, however, the action is software-initiated, a UAC prompt is shown, much like the existing Vista ones. I took a look at UAC in detail at PDC, but lamented that the Administrator confirmation prompts were a bit too easy to dismiss. The beta resolves that by reintroducing the screen dimming that Vista's UAC does whenever it shows an Administrator a prompt. The slider described at PDC still exists to allow UAC to be easily changed in a granular way, but overall I'm happy with the default; the number of prompts is significantly reduced, but it still traps the important things.
As a home user I rarely see UAC, as a network admin I see it all the time - and a lot of those times it's not neccesary (I normally only start computer management to tinker with something on a remote machine, yet am always prompted), so that's great news for me. The guy's only real concern is IE8.
Installed it on my NC10 last night since XP felt clunky, old and pretty much useless. Have to say that it runs like a dream. Vista was too 'heavy' so there isn't really much of a middle OS bar OSX. Win7 feels light and quick enough on my 2GB NC10 anyway and I'll most likely stick with it until August 1st.
The only issue is that Aero snap needs turning off. Due to a netbook's small resolution windows keep snapping all over the place the moment you move them lol
Keep an eye out for the 'netbook' edition (http://windows7center.com/windows-7-news/windows-7-netbook-edition-confirmed/) :)
I'll be most likely getting that. I'll be buggered if I'm opting for Vista Basic :D
Admiral Huddy
13-01-2009, 17:17
Windows 7 doesn't seem to like my nforce3 chipset.
As a home user I rarely see UAC, as a network admin I see it all the time - and a lot of those times it's not neccesary (I normally only start computer management to tinker with something on a remote machine, yet am always prompted), so that's great news for me. The guy's only real concern is IE8.
On Kari's laptop I seem to routinely come across it for the often the most bizarre of reasons; e.g. If I plug in my external hard disk, I can't access it without confirming a UAC prompt, even just simple stuff like copying files from my user location to it causes it. From how that description of Windows 7's UAC reads hopefully that should fall under "user initiated action". UAC under Vista annoys me in ways gksudo never does under Gnome. At least it's appearance under Gnome always seems logical to me.
Yeah, and the more they move over to PolicyKit the less I see prompts at all - If I'm just looking/checking settings I dont need to be prompted.
LeperousDust
13-01-2009, 19:25
I installed it on a spare laptop but didn't pay attention to the fact it was only running intel i915 graphics, so lost out on Glass, which a lot of the cool new stuff is obviously based on... It felt very much like vista with pinned big icons. For the short time i played it was nothing bad at all though. Seems good and i'd like to run it on some real hardware...
I'm seriously impressed with how well this is running on 'outdated' hardware, especially when I compare it the experiences I've had with Vista (even freshly installed) on new hardware. Graphics card in this isn't any cop at all, won't even do DirectX under Vista/7 so can't see any of the fancy graphics, but everything else runs smoothly and nicely. It's responsive, and barely taking up any memory (base of OS is coming to about 400Mb, I think.) Vista has been seriously annoying me with how much of a chore it can be to do stuff like open Control Panel, 7 is doing it almost instantly, even when I'm deliberately thrashing the system. It may well be something as simple as making the UI the highest priority for the scheduler, but whatever it is it's working. Given the UI is the most conscious aspect of an OS it's been critical for them to get this right.
edit: Another geeky bonus that most people won't realise is the network layer. For Server 2008 the entire networking layer was completely rebuilt from ground up to reduce overhead and latency.
Sounding good, I'm still a fan of XP even on newer machines (rarely have problems with it) but will be looking at Windows 7 once my new HDDs arrive this weekend, might be worth a bash. Just curious though, anyone using the 64 bit version of it for gaming etc? how's the compatibility?
LeperousDust
15-01-2009, 05:40
edit: Another geeky bonus that most people won't realise is the network layer. For Server 2008 the entire networking layer was completely rebuilt from ground up to reduce overhead and latency.
Actually i did notice this :D It's blisteringly fast in network shares. I'm in and out of them all the time on XP and Vista and using them on 7 was amazing! That is something i'm definitely very happy with!
I was using server 2008 on my PC for gaming a few weeks ago, surprisingly good it is too! Rather chunky though and after setting it up as a workstation I couldn't do the work that my employers had given me a license for, so had to wipe it :-P
Great whilst it lasted though!
Just tried it and it booted from the DV but the first screen was just blank and stayed blank.
I went back to XP and when I put the DVD in my DVD-RW Windows can't see it or even get a handle on the size. I'm guessing the disc is corrupt and that with a decent DVD XP should be able to 'see' it and let me explore the contents etc. ?
anyone else had trouble burning this ISO?
its failed on me twice now :(
anyone else had trouble burning this ISO?
its failed on me twice now :(
Install it from a USB pen drive, quicker and easier :)
edit: instructions here http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7vista-from-usb-drive-detailed-100-working-guide/comment-page-1/
I've just done another DVD using IMGBurn at 2x speed.
Let's see if this one fares any better...
I would install from a USB drive but I dont think this PC can boot from USB.
seems to be installing now but my word this is hugely slow...
Blighter
15-01-2009, 22:53
Sure your drive isn't going up the creek? ;D
possibly but the install just sits doing nothing for 5 mins between stages, when it doesn't even need the DVD :S
Blighter
15-01-2009, 22:58
possibly but the install just sits doing nothing for 5 mins between stages, when it doesn't even need the DVD :S
Installing it on a Maxtor? ;D
LeperousDust
15-01-2009, 23:30
Somethings definitely wrong there dude, on a crappy laptop the install properly flew, i was shocked. I was totally up and ready and good to go in probably 20 mins? Shocked at how easy Windows installations are getting now days! The install even had me connected to a wireless access point before i'd even hit the desktop! :D
Well, that was short lived.
WiFi card doesn't work and D-Link don't do Vista drivers for it. I might try XP ones but i'm not holding out much hope on that front. Lame.
That's D-Link for you, though it's a common problem with wi-fi (Linux has it worse). That's why I got myself a USB wi-fi dongle that I know has plenty native driver support, just for the cases where this happens.
Installed on my Acer Aspire One with 512mb ram, 160G HD
Took about 30 mins, the longest bit was expanding files, the rest took not much time at all. didn't have to do much, it did everything by itself apart from asking for a username and set a password.
http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/2936/60941680wr0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
That's pretty impressive. Vista was a completely unfunny joke running with only 512MB. Wouldn't want to try that again, ever.
the_dead_parrot
18-01-2009, 00:28
That acer with windows 7 looks fantastic. How well does it run? I have seen this netbook on hotdeals and people seem to be going mad for it. Think I might get one.
It's okay, video takes about a second or so after clicking to playing, prob due to the low ram more than the CPU as performance is at around 40% when playing. Boot up to password screen takes less than 30 seconds, which is quite impressive.
The biggest worry is not the speed, its battery life, watching divx, 15 mins in, 90% left and it fluctuate between 1 hr 30 to 1 hr 45 mins on the battery life. I will have to get a bigger 6 cell battery for this and run XP if i want it to last 5+ hours.
LeperousDust
18-01-2009, 02:43
Quoted battery life will be running the variant of linux it ships with and with the screen dimmed to silly levels.
btw, everything just works in windows 7 !
Even the built in webcam, it just worked, with no need for me to install drivers, and the mic too, and the wifi, its great !
the_dead_parrot
18-01-2009, 12:37
It's okay, video takes about a second or so after clicking to playing, prob due to the low ram more than the CPU as performance is at around 40% when playing. Boot up to password screen takes less than 30 seconds, which is quite impressive.
The biggest worry is not the speed, its battery life, watching divx, 15 mins in, 90% left and it fluctuate between 1 hr 30 to 1 hr 45 mins on the battery life. I will have to get a bigger 6 cell battery for this and run XP if i want it to last 5+ hours.
Well I suppose it cant be perfect, as mentioned quoted battery life is usually very far off the real thing. Have you thought about upgrading the ram? Its only £10 a stick apparently. Think I might go and get one from ASDA today.
It's not about the £10 stick, its about how you get to the RAM, it require a disassembly !
the_dead_parrot
18-01-2009, 12:46
It's not about the £10 stick, its about how you get to the RAM, it require a disassembly !
Thanks for that info I thought it would be a couple of screws and job done. Just watched the youtube walkthrough, dont think they could have made adding RAM any harder.
That's a real nice thing about the Dell mini, all the upgradable components (RAM, Wifi/BT, SSD) are under one panel on the bottom, 2 screws, phillips head. Need to get round to upgrading the memory on that actually.
http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/36371.jpg
No moving parts either, so totally silent <3
This little thing is really great, or windows 7, or a combination !
http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/1593/img8098aw9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
:D
Have MS gone all Apple with their task bar, or is that something you've done? :)
its the default settle, when say you have the video as primary thing you are doing and click on the taskbar, and select say firefox and you have 3 tabs open. The 3 tabs shows up like that and you can directly go into anyone of them.
Stan_Lite
18-01-2009, 16:45
Installed it on my NC10 last night since XP felt clunky, old and pretty much useless. Have to say that it runs like a dream. Vista was too 'heavy' so there isn't really much of a middle OS bar OSX. Win7 feels light and quick enough on my 2GB NC10 anyway and I'll most likely stick with it until August 1st.
The only issue is that Aero snap needs turning off. Due to a netbook's small resolution windows keep snapping all over the place the moment you move them lol
Did the same the other day. Seems to run pretty well on the NC10 but still uses a fair amount of RAM. Uses about 530MB at idle and 640MB with Firefox open with 6 tabs and Thunderbird running - whereas XP Home was using about 300MB idle. It doesn't seem to struggle though but I think I'll be upgrading to 2GB when I get back home.
Haven't had a chance to play with it properly yet but will do over the next week or so as I shouldn't be too burdened work-wise.
Install it from a USB pen drive, quicker and easier :)
edit: instructions here http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7vista-from-usb-drive-detailed-100-working-guide/comment-page-1/
I found that how-to as well and it works a treat - well impressed. I forgot to bring blank DVDs with me so it was sort of a necessity :o
Another way to do it is to mount the iso in XP or Vista (using Daemon Tools or similar) and start the install from there. I did that to start with to triple boot until I'd had a chance to try it out and it worked fine. It worked fine for dual booting but I'm not sure how it would work if you wanted to install it to the same partition as your XP/Vista installation. Maybe someone else knows.
One annoyance was that after I'd installed it, the boot page only showed the two Windows installations so I had to boot up a liveCD to re-instate grub and edit the menu.lst file to include Windows 7 - of course, since I subsequently had to re-install, I had to go through the same rigmarole of using up 2 USB ports with my external DVD drive and loading up the Ubuntu LiveCD. I've since made an Ubuntu liveUSB to save hassle in future - comes in very handy, actually.
Don't do what I did though. After I decided to keep it, I got rid of my XP partition and shrank my Ubuntu partition to give it plenty of room and discovered to my horror that the MBR was on the XP partition I'd just obliterated. Because I didn't have a DVD and I hadn't done the USB thing yet, I had no way of repairing it. I tried doing it through Ubuntu but couldn't get it to work so I ended up installing Vista temporarily, making the USB and then re-installing Windows 7. Bit of a faff but I got there in the end.
Have MS gone all Apple with their task bar, or is that something you've done? :)
No they've kinda gone OS X. By default all open windows are clustered together, so if you've got 2 instances of firefox open you'll only see a single task bar item. No program titles or the like, just the icon is displayed. Hover over it and it'll pop up a list. Also QuickLaunch has gone away and you can pin items to the task bar. I'm not sure I like that last bit, I use Quick Launch a lot.
That's what I meant. I noticed all the icons and the effects on the taskbar and immediately thought of OS X.
I routinely turn off Quick Launch because so much stuff now thinks it's a good idea to dump an icon there. I do pin stuff though so maybe this would work for me.
Had 1.5 Gig downloaded and Firefox crashed and my download was corrupt, it took 3 hours to ge to 1.5, I hate ADSL is so ****** slow.
Use a torrent or a download manager then. Sorted.
Use a torrent or a download manager then. Sorted.
Torrent, I am capped to 10kB/s in the day on torrent, even with firefox I was only getting 100kB/s which I find shocking considering I am suppose to be on the max package on BT.
I would love to go back to Virgin but the £37 a month was to much.
Well I was getting about 100KB/s from the official link too, torrent maxed my line so I used that.
As above, download manager and multiple connections will sort it.
I used to get 10kB/s torrents at 3am. That was on PlusNet. That was the final straw and I quit.
Del Lardo
18-01-2009, 23:53
Well I was getting about 100KB/s from the official link too, torrent maxed my line so I used that.
Was getting 1.5mb/s (12mbit) from the MS site though I didn't get around to downloading it until yesterday.
I finally got this installed via USB after the ISO coastered about 6 more DVDs.
Lovin it!
Appart from the fact that the Firefox icon has 'gone' from the taskbar though!!
Stan_Lite
30-01-2009, 06:15
I finally got this installed via USB after the ISO coastered about 6 more DVDs.
Lovin it!
Appart from the fact that the Firefox icon has 'gone' from the taskbar though!!
You can add icons to the taskbar, simply by dragging them onto it or by right clicking on the icon for the application and selecting "Pin to taskbar" :)
The quick launch has gone but you can basically make your taskbar into one big quick launch bar by populating it manually. I like this as I don't like having icons and crap on my desktop so I tend to run a lot of things from the taskbar.
Beansprout
30-01-2009, 14:12
Installed Windows 7 in Parallels on my mac and it's definitely interesting...like a prettier version of Vista really, though that doesn't say much....
Mac? You? Bloomin turncoat. :angry: :p
Just kidding - I know you've had one for ages.
Beansprout
30-01-2009, 17:07
Had one for ages and it's survived so far! I've sent it flying off beds, dropped it, generally abused it and typed millions of keystrokes and apart from, um, a broken DVD drive and fan, it's soldiering on...just don't touch the back left corner :D
Need to send it to Apple....:(
You can add icons to the taskbar, simply by dragging them onto it or by right clicking on the icon for the application and selecting "Pin to taskbar" :)
The quick launch has gone but you can basically make your taskbar into one big quick launch bar by populating it manually. I like this as I don't like having icons and crap on my desktop so I tend to run a lot of things from the taskbar.
sorry, didn't mean the whole icon had gone... it was just like it lost the .ico file so i didn't have the logo there, just that one you get when it can't find the image file.
does anybody know if its possible to install 4OD on Win7?
Geek-worthy question.
Does anyone know if virtualization (the UAC sort, not the VMWare one) still exists in Windows 7? Microsoft suggested it was Vista only - I just need to know if they kept their word. :)
Who here has upgraded a Vista install rather than starting afresh?
I want to try out the beta and, if it's stable enough, use it as my main OS rather than Vista but I'm dreading reinstalling all my apps so the upgrade option looks tempting.
I've also heard that there will be no upgrade path from the beta to the full retail, when it's released, so I'm looking at a reinstall then anyway. Don't really want to go through all the pain now only to have to do it again relatively soon so I'm contemplating just upgrading.
Anyone done it? What were your experiences?
Unless you're prepared for the eventuality that it destroys all your software and obliterates all your files then it really isn't for you. I certainly wouldn't be trying an upgrade and you'll have no choice when the beta expires anyway.
Given what you're asking, I'd suggest the beta isn't for you, but it's your choice of course. :)
I wouldn't be running it as a main OS just yet, as it's completely unsupported and if it does lunch your files (which it already did with MP3s at first release, cutting 3 or 4 seconds off the start of a track if you listened to it) Microsoft will just say 'tough ****'.
That and half your installed programs might not work anyway. Pretty sure stuff like Anti-Virus will need to be reinstalled etc.
Stan_Lite
03-02-2009, 18:42
If you can wait until the weekend when I (hopefully) get home, I'm going to do just that on one of my machines. The machine in question is my gaming machine and all of the important data is on a separate HDD from the OS. If it goes tits up, I'll just re-install Vista and a few programs (Openoffice, Avast, Firefox etc.).
Thanks for the replies guys. Think I might just install it on a spare disk as a test to play around with rather than attempting to use it as my main OS for now.
Looking mainly to play around with Media Center and specifically the DVB-S support. If this works ok then I may try using it day-to-day on my HTPC in place of Vista as it's not the end of the world if that lunches itself :)
just tried to run Saints Row 2 in Win 7 to compare with Vista and its running in like a low res window, in the middle of the screen, with a huge black border - i've seen this happen before but i can't remember how to fix it.
i've tried to change the display settings, delete the settings file and start again etc - even installed latest drivers again...
any ideas? (oh and i tried Alt + Enter)
*edit*
guess its to do with image scaling - changed option to scale to full panel but now the game crashes on startup :(
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