Windows 7 is Back on the Menu
Heavy traffic put Windows 7 beta download on hold yesterday, but we’re hearing reports that things are humming along nicely now in Redmond. Here’s the link in case you missed it: you can find both the 32- and 64-bit versions. Early reports of installs and impressions exceed what we saw in the earlier build. Folks appear happy about the lighter overall footprint and cleaned-up UI. I’m on EV-DO and have to wait until I get home before I download, so someone save me a spot in the download line. Thanks!
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Does upgrading to Windows 7 from Vista trash Windows Mail and force you to use Windows Live Mail? I’ve looked at the 2009 version of Windows Live Mail and it remains unusable on small screens. If upgrading to Windows 7 leaves you stuck with Windows Live Mail, beware.
Details at http://www.segal.org/tablet/live/.
When I press the Download Now button nothing happens. Glad I got it from other sources. At least now I have the product key.
Kevin, you can go ahead and get the product key now — “while supplies last.” You get that first, anyway, and the download link comes with the product key. You can always download the ISO later.
I couldn’t download it using Firefox; had to use IE after having to install Silverlight and an ActiveX download manager. Nice one Microsoft!
WOW when MS get it right, it works fine. Started downloading at 1900hrs finished at 2030hrs GMT. Now burning iso. So lets see how things work out.
Further to Mickey’s post above, there’s a problem with getting Outlook 2007 to connect to Exchange via HTTP. I’ll probably stop using the beta until that’s fixed which is a shame because everything else is really nice.
The install is really smooth and even detects and connects to your wifi network to download updates. It found most of the drivers for my 2730p and did a much better job of this than Vista. The networking is seamless and I was able to connect to my WHS without being prompted for a login (my username and password are the same on both machines).
Coming in and out of sleep is instantaneous – it’s REALLY impressive – and start up and shut down are much faster than on Vista. Other than that, the UI has been tidied up and the new taskbar is pretty easy to get used to although I’d prefer it if the taskbar thumbnails and Windows Peek were faster.
Thanks for keeping us updated, Kevin. Just dropped into a Starbucks here in Vegas, connected to my work machine via VNC, and on Monday when I get back into the office I’ll hopefully have a nice big ISO of Win7 waiting for me :)
5 unique keys today…
OMG! WOW! That’s all I can continually say about Windows 7. I’ve been running it on my Latitude E6400 since 11:00am this morning, and I’m just continually amazed by it.
In fact, it’s the first time a beta version of Windows has even slightly impressed me since Windows 2000, and I have decided to keep it full time on my main laptop.
I completed the login process using Safari on my 17″ 10.5.6 MacBookPro but only saw the progress wheel on the screen where the serial number and ‘download’ link were supposed to be – for an hour. FYI: I have Silverlight installed in Safari.
I tried FireFox on my Mac and got the serial number and Download button but clicking the download button did nothing.
Windows 7 beta is running very well on my Toshiba Portege m700. The ‘change screen orientation button’ doesn’t work but both touch and pen input work just fine – i like the new onscreen keyboard’s larger touch-friendly keys.
I installed some of Toshiba’s drivers/utilities and now get a lot of permission requests on startup for some reason; i’ve seen no increase in functionality with those Vista drivers so I’m removing them ASAP – i thought I’d try them to see if they resolved the TabletPC orientation functions (no!!).
Its noticeably faster to start up and wake from sleep. The Speed Index test will not complete after being left for almost three hours – with the fan making so much noise I was reminded of Ralph flying in episodes of the Greatest American Hero!
Parallels just updated Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac with experimental support for Windows 7 so I plan to install Windows 7 as a virtual machine to note the differences from Vista – if any, though given my experience with the Windows 7 so far I expect to see speed improvements.
I may just be getting old or I may not be “visually oriented” but I hate the new icon-based taskbar easily as much as I hate the OS X dock. I like reading the names of running apps in the XO & Vista taskbars; I hate having to ‘process’ or ‘translate’ the icons in the new taskbar and the OS X dock. Maybe I’m just dimwitted but I’m counting on some shareware to give me back the text-based taskbar in much the same way as I use “Switcheroo” (a windows taskbar for OS X) and “FruitMenu” (Classic’s user-configurable text-based Apple Menu.
Okay, maybe I’m not so much dim-witted as I am mental. At least I’m not still using Mac OS 9 or Windows XP! Right? Guys? Hello? Oh hell….