6 ms·

Microsoft Releases Windows 7 Beta as a Free Download

64 points by atestu 18y ago

andr 18y ago
Apple fanboys, prepare your weapons!
- ashleyw 18y 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.
  - redrobot5050 18y 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.
    - kajecounterhack 18y ago
      1. PCs are cheaper than Macs, hardware wise, so if you compare them at price-point, Windows will probably still come out on top. 2gb ram on a PC is probably cheaper than 1gb ram on a Mac. 2. There's a "Classic View" option on the side of the control panel that allows you to see "Add/Remove Programs" Microsoft does have a bit of an analogy to the American car industry - viruses are like the autoworkers unions. Microsoft users need to run antivirus software most of the time (though it's changing because of beefed up security within windows and windows finally not running everything as root), and it's like how American car companies pay $3000 more per car because American workers are more expensive.
      - riobard 18y ago
        "2gb ram on a PC is probably cheaper than 1gb ram on a Mac." No such difference if you swap yourself. Actually I got a used 1gb ram from a Mac and installed it on a PC.
        kajecounterhack 18y ago
        Truth. Still, every other component of the Mac is more expensive, and in the end ($2000-mac + $20) > ($1000-similarly-spec'd-pc + $20)
      - redrobot5050 18y ago
        >1. PCs are cheaper than Macs, hardware wise, so if you compare them at price-point, Windows will probably still come out on top. 2gb ram on a PC is probably cheaper than 1gb ram on a Mac. Maybe you haven't heard, but Macs use Intel chipsets now. RAM is RAM. The 90% of the mac faithful that have actually bought a mac before switcher ads know that you never buy RAM from Apple. And let's avoid the price-point argument because it can really go either way depending on what you're doing and what you're looking for. >2. There's a "Classic View" option on the side of the control panel that allows you to see "Add/Remove Programs" FAIL. I was using classic view. Its not called "Add/Remove Programs" anymore. I even fired up my Vista Business VHD image on my XP workstation to double check...and yup....FAIL UI still FAILs at UI. The control panel is called "Programs and Features". Also, your analogy makes no sense whatsoever. GM is billing for pensions and obligations it agreed to shoulder in good faith, but never funded, because it assumed it would never faulter in terms of revenue, and thus, it would have the income to pay out those obligations at a later date. Unions are about 3% of the problem. Bad Design and Bad Management are the other insignificant 97%.
  - jodrellblank 18y 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...
ars 18y 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.
- derefr 18y 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.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - aneesh 18y 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 18y 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.
    - doodyhead 18y ago
      Early performance tests of the latest build of Windows 7 have shown it's significantly faster than Vista and XP (and still outperforms both with 1 GB of RAM): http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236&page=2 http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236&page=2
mdasen 18y 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.
- kylec 18y 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/2008/10/14/why-7.aspx http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/1...
  - tlrobinson 18y 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.
    - opticksversi 18y ago
      I've heard Snow Leopard (OS X 10.7) Snow Leopard is OS X v10.6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.6
      - 18y ago
socratees 18y 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 18y ago
So, were do I download it?
- kylec 18y 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 18y ago
  Not available till friday.
- aneesh 18y 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 http://www.microsoft.com/windows7
- briansmith 18y 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 18y ago
    If you're in a startup, check out Microsoft's BizSpark program for startups: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark 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 18y ago
Microsoft vs other OS is similar Coca-Cola vs other soft drinks. Microsoft will "always" have a significant market share.
quoderat 18y 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 18y ago
Can anyone here who has used it provide a review?
watmough 18y 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 18y 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 18y 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.

64 points by atestu 18y ago

andr 18y ago

Apple fanboys, prepare your weapons!

ashleyw 18y 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.
- redrobot5050 18y 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.
  - kajecounterhack 18y ago
    1. PCs are cheaper than Macs, hardware wise, so if you compare them at price-point, Windows will probably still come out on top. 2gb ram on a PC is probably cheaper than 1gb ram on a Mac. 2. There's a "Classic View" option on the side of the control panel that allows you to see "Add/Remove Programs" Microsoft does have a bit of an analogy to the American car industry - viruses are like the autoworkers unions. Microsoft users need to run antivirus software most of the time (though it's changing because of beefed up security within windows and windows finally not running everything as root), and it's like how American car companies pay $3000 more per car because American workers are more expensive.
    - riobard 18y ago
      "2gb ram on a PC is probably cheaper than 1gb ram on a Mac." No such difference if you swap yourself. Actually I got a used 1gb ram from a Mac and installed it on a PC.
      - kajecounterhack 18y ago
        Truth. Still, every other component of the Mac is more expensive, and in the end ($2000-mac + $20) > ($1000-similarly-spec'd-pc + $20)
    - redrobot5050 18y ago
      >1. PCs are cheaper than Macs, hardware wise, so if you compare them at price-point, Windows will probably still come out on top. 2gb ram on a PC is probably cheaper than 1gb ram on a Mac. Maybe you haven't heard, but Macs use Intel chipsets now. RAM is RAM. The 90% of the mac faithful that have actually bought a mac before switcher ads know that you never buy RAM from Apple. And let's avoid the price-point argument because it can really go either way depending on what you're doing and what you're looking for. >2. There's a "Classic View" option on the side of the control panel that allows you to see "Add/Remove Programs" FAIL. I was using classic view. Its not called "Add/Remove Programs" anymore. I even fired up my Vista Business VHD image on my XP workstation to double check...and yup....FAIL UI still FAILs at UI. The control panel is called "Programs and Features". Also, your analogy makes no sense whatsoever. GM is billing for pensions and obligations it agreed to shoulder in good faith, but never funded, because it assumed it would never faulter in terms of revenue, and thus, it would have the income to pay out those obligations at a later date. Unions are about 3% of the problem. Bad Design and Bad Management are the other insignificant 97%.
- jodrellblank 18y 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...

ars 18y 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.

derefr 18y 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.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- aneesh 18y 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 18y 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.
  - doodyhead 18y ago
    Early performance tests of the latest build of Windows 7 have shown it's significantly faster than Vista and XP (and still outperforms both with 1 GB of RAM): http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236&page=2 http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236&page=2

mdasen 18y 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.

kylec 18y 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/2008/10/14/why-7.aspx http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/1...
- tlrobinson 18y 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.
  - opticksversi 18y ago
    I've heard Snow Leopard (OS X 10.7) Snow Leopard is OS X v10.6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.6
    - 18y ago

socratees 18y 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 18y ago

So, were do I download it?

kylec 18y 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 18y ago
Not available till friday.
aneesh 18y 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 http://www.microsoft.com/windows7
briansmith 18y 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 18y ago
  If you're in a startup, check out Microsoft's BizSpark program for startups: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark 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 18y ago

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

quoderat 18y 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 18y ago

Can anyone here who has used it provide a review?

watmough 18y 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 18y 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 18y 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.