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Author Topic: Windows 7 beta Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 01-13-2009 06:55 PM                     Saw a note from my mailbox of Win7 downloads, thus I took the stab at it. Went to the Microsoft site, to the Win7 section, filled out the simple Q&A's to enable the download. with DSL, took 9 hours to pull down a 2.4gB file that had to be burnt to a DVD as an .iso image file. Shoved in an extra HDD in my laptop, so I can keep my XP OS intact along with the files that are on it on the other drive, and installed this new OS beta on that spare HDD with telling the computer to boot from CD rom drive. Install took less than a half-hour. Not bad at all ... Afterwards, I still had to install some drivers that are needed for my particular laptop - sound, video, pointing devices - that the default install couldn't see. After the install, I had to activate it to make it 'legal' for me to use. ..beta expires first of August of this year. Thus I got from today until then to play with it and offer feedback to its performance. As much of it that I play with, I do believe that this is the definite replacement for VISTA. But as with VISTA, it's a bit of a memory hog. Thus, you definitely need the 1GB of RAM as the minimum requirements. But, the nice thing is that it boots up quicker than VISTA ,tons more user friendly than VISTA can even think of along with accepting 3rd party programs more easier. ..something to share with the FT gang.. thx-Monte  |  IP: Logged Jonathan Althaus Master Film Handler Posts: 435 From: Bedford, TX Registered: Dec 2008 posted 01-13-2009 07:04 PM                     So is this a free beta?  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-13-2009 07:29 PM                     Monte... Whats download the link? I've heard alot of good things about Windows 7 from others that are beta testing it. Mark  |  IP: Logged Michael Gonzalez Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 790 From: Grand Island , NE USA Registered: Sep 2000 posted 01-13-2009 08:11 PM                     http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx  |  IP: Logged Andy Muirhead Master Film Handler Posts: 323 From: Galashiels, Scotland Registered: Dec 2000 posted 01-13-2009 08:15 PM                     From what I heard, Microsoft had listened (or at least took notice) of the poor take up from Vista regarding hogging resources. quote: Monte L Fullmer But as with VISTA, it's a bit of a memory hog. Thus, you definitely need the 1GB of RAM as the minimum requirements. Sounds like it's not the case. WHY don't they listen? Who wants a resource hungry OS? Not me, that's why I never installed Vista. Any chance we could just have a stable, small footprint OS from Microsoft without any bells and whistles? I don't want LINUX either. I'll stick with XP until, well until I just can't anymore.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 01-13-2009 08:26 PM                     To answer the question above: it's a free download being a beta and you can burn as many copies of this to distribute around if you wish - Microsoft gave the green light on this one. Course, I forgot to mention that I didn't add any AV with this install (even though that I will install AVG being free and hardly uses any memory), thus why it booted up quick and easy, but using the 'gadget' tab, it had a gadget to show processor usage and memory percentage. And with just the desktop on the screen that it was close to 20 percent memory used - course also, my laptop is also using some of that memory for video being onboard video. Thus, maybe it's easier on memory allocations that what VISTA is..have to check that one out more.. Also, forgot to mention: IE-8 that comes with this: prettier than anything they've had, lots of more buttons and whistles, but Firefox3 is still better.. -Monte  |  IP: Logged Michael Gonzalez Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 790 From: Grand Island , NE USA Registered: Sep 2000 posted 01-13-2009 09:09 PM                     The ONLY reason I would consider buying Windows 7 is if they have a Blu-Ray/Hd-dvd software player build into media center. I built a HTPC and can watch HDTV (over the air) as well as my DVD collection via Media Center with a remote control. But in order to use my bluRay/HDVD player, I have to use a mouse and keyboard and run off of Power DVD. I hate that and currently there is no work around.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 01-14-2009 01:57 AM                        Is that what they are calling it? Windows 7? Let's see. If Windows 3.11 was Windows 3, then there was 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP and Vista... hmmmmm something doesn't add up. Just like Microsoft, can't even add. They seem to be pretty eager to replace Vista. So what's new with this OS? What makes it different?  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 01-14-2009 02:09 AM                     The "7" number comes from the Build number. Win7 is a Ver.6.1.7000 (To find your version of windows, type "CMD" in the run box. Then type ver, then ENTER .. this will give you the Version number) An article from C-NET what started my interest. Windows 7 could be one of Microsoft's greatest operating systems, if it fulfills the promise shown by the unofficial beta version (build 7000) we have been testing for the past couple of days. Let me preface these quick impressions of Redmond's latest opus by saying that I came to Windows 7 after having happily run the much-maligned Windows Vista on my Intel Core 2 Duo-based PC for the past 18 months (alongside Ubuntu). I found Vista to be a worthy upgrade from Windows XP SP2. Despite its obvious flaws (can you say "resource hog"?) and the acknowlegement that some of its features need to be disabled by default, Vista at heart is a much more stable and usable operating system than XP, which was first released in 2001. The release of Service Pack 1 and gradual driver improvements have built on Microsoft's somewhat-shaky Vista beginning. Coming from this background, I have been pleased to discover over the past several days that Microsoft appears to have built on Vista's strengths and addressed most of its weaknesses with the beta release of Windows 7. I found the Windows 7 beta a painless install. Out-of-the-box driver support on our test machine was perfect, and it took only half an hour and two quick reboots to begin running a stable desktop environment, though we wondered why Windows 7 created a 200MB partition in addition to its main partition. The 33MB of updates quickly came down the pipe upon loading the desktop. Basic desktop performance was strong; the reports that Windows 7 is simply faster than Vista appear to be true. Certainly, Windows 7 had no problem simultaneously installing and launching applications, downloading files, browsing the Web, and carrying out other tasks on our modest 2.8GHz Pentium 4, which has only an 80GB IDE hard disk and 512MB of RAM. Vista's most visible annoyance, User Account Control, has been pared right back on its default setting, and we encountered it only a couple of times throughout a whole morning of installing applications. However, if you feel nostalgic for UAC's old behavior, you can easily change it back via Windows 7's new Action Center, which now centralizes all of the security updates and warning alerts that Windows throws your way. Windows 7 recommended that we install a third-party antivirus package (it suggested Kaspersky and AVG), but its antispyware package Defender comes preinstalled. Microsoft appears to have an antivirus package installed under the hood; when downloading new software with Firefox, we were told that our downloads were being scanned for viruses. I particularly like the new photo-realistic device icons, and the overhaul of the way Windows handles and ejects USB storage devices. Microsoft appears to have wiped out a lot of the Windows XP-era interface quirks of Vista; the result is a much more simplistic, unified experience for common tasks. I also enjoyed the overhaul of the Windows taskbar, especially the slick graphics, but a bug prevented us from being able to use the preview function (it showed a black rectangle instead), and you'll want to play with the taskbar settings to get this piece of the Windows 7 puzzle just right. It's easy to get minimized windows mixed up with launcher buttons, for example. I want to stress that we didn't test the Windows 7 beta exhaustively, and business users will need to closely examine deployment software and how the operating system integrates into their existing environments, as well as its ability to work well with third-party software. For example, we couldn't get Adobe Systems' Creative Suite 3 to install on Windows 7 beta; the installer told us we needed to quit Internet Explorer first. But perhaps the most important thing to note about the software is that at first glance, it has much more of that nebulous "Windows XP feel" than Vista ever did. Even on our modest machine, Windows 7 didn't thrash the hard disk or ever feel unresponsive, except when we were installing Apple's iTunes, a notorious pain on Windows systems. In general, this signals that Microsoft has spent a lot of effort with Windows 7 on delivering a solid operating system that won't "wow" anyone but will satisfy them on a much deeper level. In other words, just what the doctor--and customers --ordered. [ 01-14-2009, 01:47 PM: Message edited by: Monte L Fullmer ]  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-14-2009 11:45 AM                        From that post, sounds like they should have skipped Vista altogether and just gone right to this new version from XP. At the least they should give every Vista user a free upgrade.  |  IP: Logged Adam Martin I'm not even gonna point out the irony. Posts: 3686 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Nov 2000 posted 01-14-2009 01:45 PM                     Awesome. Vista lasted a whole year longer than Windows ME!  |  IP: Logged Michael Gonzalez Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 790 From: Grand Island , NE USA Registered: Sep 2000 posted 01-14-2009 03:30 PM                     BTW. What ever happen to that brand spanking new (and muched hyped) database/file system that was origionally suppose to come with Vista but was to have been pushed back to their next operating system? That does not seem to be a part of Windows 7 either.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-14-2009 10:23 PM                     I'm fairly impressed by its rock solidness and I'll add that it is not really very resource hungry!! I'm running my beta copy on an Intel Atom 330 based pico computer with just 1 gig of ram and its really pretty speedy.. although I did pull the OCZ SSD I had in there and installed a 250 gig Hitachi GOMHD to test Windows 7 so the GOMHD makes it seem a little slower than XP was. Install is so easy a three year old could do it. As with the others it took just under a half hour form start to workable screen. The drivers I had to load for wireless and so on went without a hitch. All in all I think they have done a good job leaving Vista in the dumpster right where it belongs... they seem to have a new winner here! The Beta also includes Internet Explorer 8. Also... You will recognize ALOT of the good XP Pro features right off the bat that thankfully made it into 7. The addition of quick tabs so you can see all the open pages you have on one screen is also nice. Edit: One thing that proves without a doubt that its less resource reliant is the fact thet the video playback of news clips and such no longer skip like they did with Xp/Explorer 7.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 01-14-2009 10:31 PM                        Someone post a screenshot of how the desktop and Start menu, etc look. I cannot stand the XP START menu. Thankfully it can be switched back to a 2000-ish menu and look.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-14-2009 10:34 PM                     This start menu is much nicer than the XP version... alot smoother and refined but I am going to keep you in suspense .  |  IP: Logged

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