Running it right now, formatted my old OS partition, and everything is working fine. Have to tell though, this thing isn't much better than the Vista RC1 was.
A bit more user friendly maybe (control panel is usable), but the UI is still a resource hog. But feels like i might actually update my OS to 7 when the final version is out.

Old OS was XP SP3.

Download it here

Go on to Windows 7 site though to get a key for it though

Quote from Lotesdelere :

Best place is the Microsoft site

im pretty sure at the time of posting it was much easier to find it anywhere else than on ms technet

Quote from geeman1 :

Everyone was going on how you should stay with Windows 98SE back when XP was new.

were all you guys living under a rock or something in the 2k-2k3 timeframe? everyone i knew was on win2k compared to which winxp rtm was truely terrible

Windows 3.1 was a pretty good version.

Had a quick go with 7 64bit this morning and it's a slight tad faster than Vista on my PC, which given any last software release is new. Apart from some Missing drivers (network, but Vista driver works, sound, works too, but if I start the control panel thingy the whole PC freezes to death) it worked out of the box.

The see through stuff looks only nice when you don't have maximised apps, the new taskbar has some clever / intuitive things but also some changes. Once a program (IE8) is running (with some tabs open) and click on the small taskbar symbol to start it nothing happens.

So far it' a VistaSE
Not tested any 3rd party apps so far.

Runs great on my crappy laptop with 1GB memory. Much faster and smoother than Vista.

Downloading Windows 7 now, will buy a small HDD at the weekend.

The code I got shouldn't expire should it?

Is it worth to try and just look? Because then I'll put it on my other HDD

Quote from Shotglass :

im pretty sure at the time of posting it was much easier to find it anywhere else than on ms technet

You're wrong, the patch has been posted one day before the beta has been made public.

Taken 6 hours to download so far, still got 2 hours or so to go..... Lovely VM and their download limits eh

Quote from pb32000 :

So the official Windows 7 beta release is due out soon, will anybody be trying this?

From what I can gather they've concentrated on touch screens (bit pointless as the % population that have touch screens is 0), a marginally different shell skin and 'performance'.



Well whoopy do Microsoft, wasn't that what the 'Show desktop' button was for in Windows 98? I swear they release statements like that just to make people laugh.

I hate m$ bashers as much as I'm sure you do, so you can proceed to hate me if you like - but seriously, what is the point in this release?

whats the point in windows 7 you say ?

quite simple:

make more money then windows 6.

Gonna give it a try (possibly against my better judgement). Don't have a spare HDD to stick it on, and not going to use a second partition on this one. So I'll have to use a VM.

Any suggestions for a decent, free, reasonably straightforward to use VM application that stands a chance of making it work? I'm not worried about the speed limitations of running an OS in a VM on an OS, but I would like to see how W7 has progressed over Vista.

Well I'll be buying a small HDD in the next few days, don't wanna risk my HDD being stuffed up, and I got far too much to back up as well. Will look forward to trying it out though.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Any suggestions for a decent, free, reasonably straightforward to use VM application that stands a chance of making it work?

microsoft virtual pc worked just fine for me... doesnt seem to support the 3d interface but on the plus side its just 30mb in size
http://www.microsoft.com/downl ... F000B5&displaylang=en

Quote from tristancliffe :

Any suggestions for a decent, free, reasonably straightforward to use VM application that stands a chance of making it work? I'm not worried about the speed limitations of running an OS in a VM on an OS, but I would like to see how W7 has progressed over Vista.

You can try VirtualBox.

runs hell fast on virtual pc (only 32bit supported)

Im gonna wait until i get another Sata hard drive first before i run it.

That way nothing should happen to the data on any other drive's and you will get it's true performance.

Running it in Virtual PC is ok, but you will never get 100% from it.

has anyone found out yet how to move the user data (c:\user) to a different partition hdd (d:\foo)?

Downloaded the 64-bit version, no problems with disconnects or DL speed with the silly 'lol wut no torrents! zomg tis is 2009!' service.

I already had my primary HD split into two 117 Gb partitions so away the install went. Took about 20-30 mins. Not many prompts in the beginning or the end of the install process.

So far the 7 has been running rock solid (though can't remember when the XP crashed unless I was dicking around with Nvidia drivers or had faulty memory sticks) and the 7 feels fast and quick to react to user inputs - same I can't say about OS X Tiger or Leopard on my office Macs.

I think I preferer the new taskbar (coming from XP/OS X) and the simple window management (quickly split two apps or windows 50/50 and have straight access to both) works well.

Lightroom 2.2 runs faster on the 7 than on my XP. No games installed yet.

Oh and the 7 looks fugly. Too much glass crap. Oh and I despise Apple's looks too - too much brushed metal and Steve Jobs is a (barely) living example that stupid amounts of reflections and gargantuan drop shadows cause cancer.

XP's Royale Noir would have been perfect with little tweaks.

Windows 7 does seem faster than Vista. The system rating cap is still too low though :P. On vista my gfx card was capped at 5.9 and now it is at 7.9

Quote from spankmeyer :

I think I preferer the new taskbar (coming from XP/OS X) and the simple window management (quickly split two apps or windows 50/50 and have straight access to both) works well.

Forgive me if I sound like an idiot as I haven't tried Win7 yet, but how is this different to the current "Tile Windows" options on the start menu?

Oh and FWIW it's worth, I always have my Windows set to Classic style, OSs beyond 2000 have just been wasting more and more pixels. My screen real estate is there for my programs, not for the OS to fill with blinged start bars and window titles.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Forgive me if I sound like an idiot as I haven't tried Win7 yet, but how is this different to the current "Tile Windows" options on the start menu?

Oh and FWIW it's worth, I always have my Windows set to Classic style, OSs beyond 2000 have just been wasting more and more pixels. My screen real estate is there for my programs, not for the OS to fill with blinged start bars and window titles.

Your as bad as my dad. He always sets his vista to classic view

Quote from Luke.S :

Windows 7 does seem faster than Vista. The system rating cap is still too low though :P. On vista my gfx card was capped at 5.9 and now it is at 7.9

Heh, it rates my 9800GTX+ at 1.0, even though it scores 5.9 in Vista (and should easily top the charts in 7 :shrug...

lol. Your card is better than mine too. I have a 9800GT

Anyone know if in Windows 7 it is as in Vista that if you want to have the 'classic' look, you will have to disable the desktop compositing (or "aero" whatever the PR department named it)? The composite desktop idea is nice but not with those awfully ugly and messy themes. (Or are there some more sane looking themes available?)