Comments on: Windows 7 Beta Over Before it Began

By: Richard

Richard — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:12:36 +0000

Windows 7 beta download link working again as at 19.00 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/

Good Luck !

By: Ron P.

Ron P. — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:53:22 +0000

Im downloading now using the normal advertised Windows 7 Link. I do not knopw if they had originally employed you to use Download Manager but that seems to be the deal now.

By: Scotty

Scotty — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:49:12 +0000

Its back up, I got my key and even better: it activated!

Hit the main Windows 7 landing page for the link to get yours!

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:36:01 +0000

NOW: The keys link works… and pretty much every time..

Log into technet

http://technet.microsoft.com/

and paste

https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/productkeys/win7-64/enus/default.aspx

into the window..

Cheers

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:37:03 +0000

The CNET story above has a link to another site (Neowin, I think) that has direct links to download Win 7 Beta ISO’s (both x86 and x64) AND to get an activation key. I used those links to download the 64-bit ISO (3.2 GB, took about 4.5 hours on DSL) and to get a key (getting the key was the hardest — had to keep refreshing the “error” page for about an hour before I got one). So, even though “official” public access has been taken down, you can still get the beta directly from Microsoft.

Having said that, I agree with the comments that say this is a big FAIL on Microsoft’s part. They intentionally built up excitement for the beta, intentionally sought to limit its availability, and then completely failed to have the proper resources in place to deliver as expected. Free or not, beta or not, this IS Microsoft. This is their bread-and-butter. It’s not like they’ve never done anything like this before. Didn’t they learn anything from the Vista beta fiasco? Somebody (or -bodies) failed big time on this one.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:22:00 +0000

Quite obviously, the download of the actual ISOs was not the problem. There are lots of direct links floating around and they download easily and with a very high performance.

The distribution and generation of the product keys was the weak spot of the story, so moving to P2P would probably not have resolved the issue.

By: HG

HG — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:03:24 +0000

Installed it on my MSI Wind and everything working great. Windows 7 seams much nicer then Vista. I’m comparing from the start I have 2GB on my MSI Wind and 2GB on my Kohjinsha SC3 with Vista. Windows 7 is using 688mb from the start and Vista 1.13GB of my RAM. Just been using Windows 7 for the last 30 minutes, going through all the settings. By the way all the drivers for the MSI Wind loaded except the Wi-Fi drivers which I just got from the MSI Wind website. Kevin you should have taken your Wind to CES. :)

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 05:15:26 +0000

Well I downloaded the torrent and if Microsoft had some sense they’d promote people to go grab the torrent (if they wanted to) and then just get a licence key from the Microsoft website. That shifts all the heavy lifting to P2P systems which is exactly what they do well (400KB/s here too Jake) and then Microsoft just need to handle the 2.5+ million requests for licence keys. Being a server/database supplier surely they could figure that bit out.

Anyway, That’s my plan and I’m sticking to it.

By: heavyharmonies

heavyharmonies — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:10:24 +0000

I downloaded both the 32- and 64-bit versions from TechNet yesterday. Was getting about 400K/sec download, so it wasn’t bad at all.

By: Jake

Jake — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:50:54 +0000

Gizmodo are reporting that the servers are back up and running now.

That means they were only down between midnight and 2am on a Friday night here in the UK ;)