Windows 7 Beta Created 15 years ago2009-01-12 19:06:42 UTC by satchmo

Anyone here running it?

I am planning to wait until it's out of beta. Vista works fine for me now, and there's little reason for me to change at this time.

I'm running it, it's nothing SPECTACULAR but it's fairly good. It's like a better Vista. There's a few bugs with permissions that can cause problems with certain apps (it's not possible to install or update Steam, though it works if you copy over an existing installation). Driver support is a non-issue, Vista drivers run just fine. The only real bug I've encountered is the aforementioned permissions bug, which in turn causes other problems, but it's suitable for daily use I'd say.

Edit: To clarify on the permissions bug, occasionally you'll find that files become "locked" and totally unaccessible, you can see them and that's about it. You can't open them, modify them or delete them, or even view their metadata, you can just see that they're there. Rebooting fixes it. It's nothing terrible, but it causes problems with quite a few apps.

Sounds promising. It's beta after all.

But how is it better than Vista?

It feels smoother (both in performance and functionality) and boots faster, at least. It also fixes many of the minor issues that Vista has. It's still got an endless appetite for memory (500MB+ on a fresh installation with all unneccessary services disabled and all the useless features off compared with my current 6 month old bloated XP installation's sub-100MB), but high memory usage doesn't neccessarily have an impact on performance when the memory management is done properly and you have adequate memory.

At the moment it literally is just a faster, better version of Vista, it's not drasticly different, I guess further down the line it'll get some more changes though. I'd personally say it's faster than XP on a machine that had enough memory and is powerful enough to use it to it's full potential, much like Vista is ON-PAR with XP on a decent machine.

Just don't open any MP3s in WMP unless you've installed the patch (Google for "Windows 7 MP3 corruption" and you'll find a link to it somewhere) or it'll corrupt their headers and take a few seconds off the beginning of them. Also, if you're planning on running Steam, install all of your games and fully update them BEFORE installing Windows 7, or keep them updated on a seperate XP/Vista installation, then copy it over.

Your mileage may vary with stability, I know someone who is having BSODs left right and center and having apps freeze up at random, while I've had no crashes or errors of any kind other than ones caused by the permissions bug. Just make sure you report any problems/bugs/errors with the feedback tool, it's there for a reason.

ust don't open any MP3s in WMP unless you've installed the patch (Google for "Windows 7 MP3 corruption" and you'll find a link to it somewhere) or it'll corrupt their headers and take a few seconds off the beginning of them.

Are you serious?! Intentional on Microsoft's part as some sort of DRM thingie?

I don't use WMP for ANYTHING anyway. In fact i never even activated it on my system. Then i let my stupid uncle touch my computer for 5 minutes and he installed/activated it. : |

Otherwise, i would never have turned it "on" at all, ever...

It's not intentional and it's got nothing todo with DRM. WMP tries to automaticly fill in missing tags/metadata with information from the internet but makes the header too long and as a result damages the first few seconds of the data itself. You can disable it, but it's enabled by default.

Microsoft really shouldn't call it Windows 7.

It's really just a SP2 release for Vista.

Except Microsoft makes everyone pay for it, of course.

It's more different than vista than you may think. Windows 2000 looked a lot like Windows 98, but was a very different OS. In fact, I'd say that Windows 2000 and XP have more in common, despite them looking completely different.

The kernel has changed quite a bit (not completely obviously as Vista drivers usually work, but whether that's through a layer of backwards compatibility or just because certain parts of it haven't been changed I don't know). It's just a better Vista FOR NOW, and only on the surface.

It's just a better Vista FOR NOW, and only on the surface.

It's just better XP FOR NOW, I'd say .

I don't know ... I can't upgrade to vista .... even though I have 2 GB of ram. I have to buy a new hdd and a new processor ...

But I don't think I'll ever install vista with this windows coming up

Vista is trash. They had absolutely no sense of direction when they were developing it. They came up with all these brilliant, ingenius features, bolted them onto WinNT 5.1 (WinXP), decided they didn't know where they were going with it, scrapped it then decided to abandon all the things that made it promising. Then they decided to just build some bloat and DRM on top of WinNT 5.2 (Server 2k3), screwed up the audio subsystem, TCP/IP stack and account/filesystem permissions and relabel it as WinNT 6. The only good thing about Vista is the memory management and the window manager (compositing <3).

I like to think of Win7 as what Vista should've been. While it still contains much of the bloat that made Vista bad and still uses the terribad audio subsystem (which is actually ok in some ways, I like the per-application volume control, but I hate the fact it draws significantly more CPU time) and networking from Vista (though both have been improved, they're still bad), it fixes many of the issues with Vista, including performance.

I don't know ... I can't upgrade to vista .... even though I have 2 GB of ram. I have to buy a new hdd and a new processor ...

What CPU/HDD do you have? If you bought/built your system around the time 2GB became mainstream, I see no reason why Vista wouldn't run just fine, though Win7 would run better, but if you don't want to use beta software and be exposed to the risks associated with it, you should probably just stick to XP until Win7 hits release.

Windows 7 uses the same kernel as Vista. XP has something completely different. Some may argue that XP's kernel is a lot more efficient than the Vista kernel.

Intel Pentium D 3.20 ghz, 2 Gb of corsair twin memory 800 mhz in dual channel , 160 gb hdd , ati radeon hd 4850 and gigabyte s-series p965 rev 3.3 .

rev 3.3 which is why I want to buy a CO rev of E8400 and stay with it at 3.6-3,8 ghz

The Win7 kernel is an improved version of what Vista uses, and is on par or better than that of WinXP depending on your hardware. Win7's kernel is to Vista's as WinXP's (NT 5.1) is to Win2k's (NT 5.0). Saying it has the same kernel is a bit simplistic, it uses the same base, but it's not identical.

Intel Pentium D 3.20 ghz, 2 Gb of corsair twin memory 800 mhz in dual channel , 160 gb hdd , ati radeon hd 4850 and gigabyte s-series p965 rev 3.3 .

rev 3.3 which is why I want to buy a CO rev of E8400 and stay with it at 3.6-3,8 ghz

That will run Vista just fine, CPU is lacking a bit but it's far from inadequate, though personally I'd stick with XP until Win7, which your computer is more than adequate for, is released.

yeah. nice news for me thanks

Windows 7 better be good, because I'm not going to vista, ever, and if windows 7 isn't great, I'll be sticking with xp, which would put me way behind in keeping up-to-date operating systems.

Windows 7 is just a beta name. Vista = 6, xp = 5 etc...

Actually, Microsoft decided make Windows 7 the official name.

I hope they call the next Windows Windows 8 then and don't do like Rambo.

Windows 8, starring Sylvester Stallone.

raver, you might want to check your sources :3

Vista was, i believe, Longhorn when it was in beta

XP was called Whistler during development as well, fyi. Personally I think Windows 7 is a bit of a silly name. It's not the 7th version of Windows, and it's not even the 7th revision of Windows NT (it's the 8th if you count 3.51). It's the 7th if you only include "home user" oriented releases (including Win2k Professional) starting at Win95 I guess.

So Vista is to Windows 7 what Windows ME was to Windows 2000.

(yes, I'm aware ME and 2K are technically nothing alike.)

Now, Windows ME was the biggest piece of shit that was ever stepped on by millions of fools.

yeah windows 2000 was pwn when it came out... so much better than 98 and no more bsod. I never had the misfortune of using ME, but i can't see how it could have possibly been worse than 98...

ME is by far the worst (>= Win95) Windows OS of the lot. I've used it, and it is just terrible. It's buggy, unstable, slow, and has terrible compatibility issues.

Wohoo! I love Windows 7's penchant for hotkeys.