Microsoft Releases Windows 7 Beta as a Free Download

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/01/microsoft-relea.html

by atestu • 18 years ago

64 39 18 years ago

blog.wired.com

andr• 18 years ago

Apple fanboys, prepare your weapons!

ashleyw• 18 years ago

Constructive criticism at the ready; FIRE AT WILL!

I never had a problem with Vista, in fact I used it for nearly 3 years (or there abouts...from the early builds till earlier in the year), until I got a Mac in June. I dislike Windows now, I'll admit it, but I know from experience Vista wasn't that bad (just launch hiccups which taunted its reign), so as long as 7 is an improvement on a perfectly good OS, all is good. Not enough for me to even think about using it as my main OS, but thats just my preference of OS; its very childish to flame somebody because of their choice of OS when it doesn't affect you in any way at all.

redrobot50504• 18 years ago

Honestly I hate Vista. Two reasons.

1) My girlfriend has a Vista laptop that shipped with 1GB of RAM. Its incredibly slow because Vista attempts to cache everything in memory, but then doesn't have enough memory to handle program launches. I know its s a simple fix -- upgrade to 2GB -- but compared to my best friends Mac Book with 1 GB -- who has room to launch iTunes, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Adium, and iPhoto with no problems -- its insane that a similar spec laptop with Vista would struggle to load Firefox.

2. To uninstall something in windows, since windows 3.1, you would go to a control panel called "Add/Remove Programs". That's been the convention since Vista. That's like a 15+ year convention. Its now been re-named to something complicated like "Program Configuration and Setting". If it was going to change, it should've had a simpler name, like "Uninstall Programs", not a more confusing one.

It seems Microsoft's B-team is just godawful at Design. They're basically the GM of software at this point.

jodrellblank2• 18 years ago

Its very childish to flame somebody because of their choice of OS when it doesn't affect you in any way at all

It affects me a lot. People around me are grumpier, the computers I support are more of a pain in the neck, the software ecosystem is pushed towards software for an OS I don't like, people are missing out on really useful features and being less happy and sometimes less productive than they could be...

ars2• 18 years ago

I have a theory.

I think microsoft deliberately adds delays/slowdowns/unoptimized code into windows.

Then each release they fix some of it - and voila it's faster than the one before it.

With vista they finally ran out of delays that they could remove, and that's why it's so slow. So they figured, if it's slow, let go all the way, and added in a new batch of slowdowns.

And right on schedule Windows 7 is faster than the one before it.

derefr2• 18 years ago

Sometimes they add layers (and introduce features in the process), sometimes they tighten layers and optimize. People hate the releases that add layers (95, 2000, Vista) when they're introduced, and then like the releases that tighten them (98, XP, 7), not realizing that both parts of the cycle must exist. People also take a while to notice features, thus attributing the features that were actually added in the disliked ancestor to its descendant.

aneesh3• 18 years ago

Exactly. Vista was more of a "lay the groundwork" release that focused on security improvements (UAC), etc. Win 7 won't change Vista much, it'll just make it look prettier -- and people will love it. But the groundwork was laid in Vista.

DougBTX• 18 years ago

[OT] Interesting how you and ars make basically the same factual claims (oscillation between slower and faster) but one gets 24 points, the other -9.

ars2• 18 years ago

Wow! A lot of downmods. Didn't expect that. It was sort of a joke (and like all good jokes, has an element of truth). I was debating if I should write that at the end, but decided not to - guess that was a mistake.

mdasen• 18 years ago

I'm not a fan of Windows, but I really hope Microsoft has created a wonderful operating system here for several reasons.

1. I do have to interact with Windows even if I don't use it - and my friends are too cheap to get a Mac and think Linux is a Peanuts character.

2. If Microsoft has good ideas, they will spread. The Windows taskbar turned out to be a great UI device that we see in KDE and Gnome among other places.

3. While I love the Mac OS X, Apple can be somewhat heavy handed with its users sometimes. Want a 17" notebook? No removable battery for you! Not a choice of whether it's important to you, whether you'd prefer the added weight, it just doesn't exist. The greater the competition from Microsoft, the more Apple will bend to users.

4. I can't wait to see the Apple commercials calling Windows 7 Vista 2 ;-).

While some Linux enthusiasts might see a stronger Windows as a barrier to Linux adoption, I guess I'm less hard core about FOSS and would rather pay up for a platform (as I do with my Mac) since I use it so much.

kylec2• 18 years ago

> 4. I can't wait to see the Apple commercials calling Windows 7 Vista 2 ;-)

That's partially true - the internal version number for Windows 7 is 6.1 (Windows Vista being 6.0):

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/1...

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

To be fair, I've heard Snow Leopard (OS X 10.7) will essentially be "Leopard 2", since there aren't a lot of new features, mostly just performance/stability improvements and "under the hood" things like OpenCL support.

aneesh3• 18 years ago

"The greater the competition from Microsoft, the more Apple will bend to users."

Mac market share has only been growing over time. If Apple was going to "bend to its users", they would've done that 5 years ago when they were still struggling to gain market share. Apple seems to have made it this far on a philosophy of "Steve's way or the highway."

Now maybe Windows 7 can change that, but I think it's a stretch at best.

kajecounterhack3• 18 years ago

Truth. Though, seeing as everything is done "Steve's way," it's hard to imagine what Apple would be like without Jobs, which will probably happen within the next 15 years (he's 53 now).

I personally hope Windows does well. Buying or building a PC and installing windows is usually a lot cheaper than buying a Mac with equivalent specs. Therefore if Windows makes a good product, I won't have to spend more to get the same stability.

Though, I'm mainly a Linux user. I don't see Windows as a threat to Linux. Many Linux users use Windows on one level or another, either in a virtual machine or in a dual boot. It's not a zero-sum game; they can coexist.

jodrellblank2• 18 years ago

3. (Battery design heavy handedness)

You act like there's an easy other option for Apple, who ignored it out of malicious dictatorial concerns.

Any other option would have had its own engineering tradeoffs (and design, support, components, manufacturing changes, documentation, training...)

And supporting multiple options would be even worse.

As it stands, they've chosen a non-removable battery so they can do a custom shape and fit 40% more in. I have a book by Peter Cochrane (former head of British Telecom research) where he talked about longer battery life in laptops by making the battery a structural component (bigger, but not heavier because it replaces part of the chassis) sometime before 1997, and this is the first time I've noticed anyone take it seriously.

Yes, some people will be annoyed, but there are many who use the 17" MBP as a luggable desktop, or mostly plugged in. It's not the case that they could ever pick a design to please everyone, and this one has the added benefit that at least it's not purely aesthetic - you get a nonremovable battery, but you get a longer battery life and more charge cycles out of it too. And anyone handy with a screwdriver will probably be able to replace it and there will probably be external backup batteries - carrying one of those will be little different to carrying a spare for a removable battery...

(By the way - the book is "108 Tips for Time Travellers" - lots of essays on technology. I remember it being very good).

socratees• 18 years ago

The comments in the page seem rather interesting. A kind of war between the microsoft guys and the osx guys. I'm not anti microsoft, but i'm certainly not in favour of any bloated software.

st3fan• 18 years ago

So, were do I download it?

kylec2• 18 years ago

Currently, it seems the only way to download it is to use a torrent of bits. Such can be found in a bay of pirates. Search and you will find.

thehigherlife• 18 years ago

Not available till friday.

aneesh3• 18 years ago

It's available on MSDN now if you have a subscription. Otherwise I think you have to wait till Friday, and it will be available here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows7

briansmith• 18 years ago

If you don't have an MSDN subscription, you can get a free (well, $100 after three years) one by joining Microsoft's Startup program.

wavesplash• 18 years ago

If you're in a startup, check out Microsoft's BizSpark program for startups: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark

Basically it's the full MSDN for 3 years. It also includes hosting deals for the server products. At the _end_ of the 3 years you have to pay $100. Overall pretty sweet if you're using the MSFT stack or need the OS's for testing.

If you're a Stirr member they can connect you - there are also other partners you can find on the bizspark site.

rokhayakebe• 18 years ago

Microsoft vs other OS is similar Coca-Cola vs other soft drinks. Microsoft will "always" have a significant market share.

quoderat• 18 years ago

Microsoft seems to be on the path of making their OSes both less powerful and more difficult to use, while Linux distros -- what Vista forced me to switch to -- seems to be on the path to making that OS both more powerful and easier to use.

Given that I won't pay the Apple tax, it's Linux for me for the foreseeable future.

breck• 18 years ago

Can anyone here who has used it provide a review?

watmough• 18 years ago

I really have to admire MS for what they've (?) pulled off here. Maybe. They have cleaned up an OS with a dire reputation, managed to get it out on the torrents, and have received nothing but great press so far.

All this, just prior to Apple putting out a modestly tweaked version of their own OS X Leopard, which is unlikely to upstage Windows 7 too much.

Very Impressive. Maybe Ballmer knows what he's doing after all.

unalone• 18 years ago

The general opinion was that Vista was inferior to Tiger upon release, and Leopard annihilates Tiger on most things.

Now, Windows is playing catch-up. They need not only to fix Vista but to add improvements. The ones they are adding still mostly fall into the Leopard blanket of feature, with the exception of the patently bizarre "half-window" feature. Apple, meanwhile, is calling Snow Leopard a speed tweak: they're reducing filesize, adding Exchange support, and improving their Quicktime codecs for native filetype support. In other words, they're closing the window and removing vulnerabilities. Everybody thinks Apple has the superior featureset, and if they're also faster and sturdier and have business support, then they have a legitimate chance of getting the vast upper hand here.

I think Microsoft is learning from their mistakes, but they're learning slowly. It'll take them a long time to clean out the muckiness of their operating system and create something as minimal as OS X. And, from what I've seen of Windows 7, they're still not going at it the right way.

ben_straub• 18 years ago

> ... the patently bizarre "half-window" feature.

I'm convinced this one comes from watching actual users do their thing. It's a huge waste of screen real estate to maximize on a large monitor, especially a widescreen one - do you really want to read a PDF 3 lines at a time? Much better to emulate having two monitors. I've used GridMove to do this for a while now.

Microsoft Releases Windows 7 Beta as a Free Download

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