Want the Windows 7 Beta? Act Fast!

By  |  Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 11:33 am

Windows 7Microsoft was planning to pull the public beta of Windows 7 off its site today. Based on popular demand, it’s decided to extend availability–but only until February 10th. (If you start snagging the beta by February 10th, you have until the 12th to complete the download.) More details here, and here’s the download page itself.

Should you try Windows 7 at this point? Yes, if you’re intrigued, have some time to devote to the project, and can do it without messing up an installation of Windows which you need to preserve as it is for work or play. (The beta will time out in August.) It’s the most promising Windows beta since…well, let’s see. Probably Windows 2000. It’s not perfect or even close, but I’d much rather spend time in it than in Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

Next big question: With the beta winding down, what’s Microsoft’s roadmap for all the rest of the steps between right now and general availability of the operating system? I hope we’ll get at least a few details in the not-too-distant future

 
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5 Comments For This Post

  1. Steven Fisher Says:
    January 24th, 2009 at 11:40 am

    I’ve been trying to download it for a few days now, but the website just shows a spinner and stays stuck forever. Typical Microsoft.

  2. Michael Galli Says:
    January 24th, 2009 at 12:45 pm

    @Steven Fisher: I dont think thats fair to Microsoft or representative of the program they have rolled out. To wit; when the Beta first came out and they were slammed and IE 8 has no built in d/l manager, they pulled it, repackaged it with AKAMI d/l manager and stramlined the process. Plus, its a freaking BETA. Not Gamma, not RC, not RC1 or even 2.

    It would be nice if people did SOME amount of research and tried to be as objective as possible before making posts bashing people and companies. Im not an employee of MSFT, or Apple, Im a ‘tech “expert” ‘ like everybody else. One thing I resolved to change in 2009 was to quit being Negative and to start taking the power of my words and print seriously.

  3. Q Master Says:
    January 24th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    I don’t think is quite ready yet so you have time to waste go ahead and try it but from my experience is not ready yet. So not to think I’m just talking to have something to do here below the full story.

    When it came up earlier this month I’ve downloaded it and I’ve burned the iso. Then grabbed my Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV600 that runs vista and ran XP prior to Vista. I whipped one the two drives off. I boot up from the DVD and all went thru fine till the first reboot after install, the one that’s finalizing the install. It died on me with BSOD.

    And I repeat this is on a laptop that’s currently running vista. I tried to locate the dump file tosee what’s happening but no luck – I won’t burn much of my time with it.

  4. Steven Fisher Says:
    January 24th, 2009 at 10:37 pm

    @Michael Galli: No, it was just poor browser support for other platforms. I’d already been through three, but I found one that worked in time. Your hate was not necessary.

  5. warren Says:
    January 25th, 2009 at 9:17 pm

    Thanks for the link. I downloaded the iso overnite. Actually, I suddenly woke up at 2 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. I had plenty of bandwidth; Over 10 mbits down so it only took 40 mins.

    I think I’ll install on the system I was planning to build as a dvr. The box will have an Athlon 64 3200+ cpu, a gig of ram, a basic nvidia 6200, 128 meg pci-e video card. I plan to install a hauppauge 150 tuner card.

    If win7 beta can work with this system, I’ll definitely get win 7 when it comes out.