http://wb.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.iso?lcid=1033&amp

Use that link. Your welcome.

I had no idea what the Taskbar properties did until your post (Never Combine, Combine When Taskbar is full, Always Combine/Hide labels). I’ve now doubled the height of the Taskbar and set it to Never Combine and Use Small Icons. Woohoo!

As a possibly amusing aside: i was typing this comment a few minutes ago and my Toshiba Portege M700 running Windows 7 beta blue-screened! Windows said it was shutting itself down so my hardware was no harmed. Weird.

Mine is a vanilla install except for my HP MediaSmart Client Software (Windows Home Server backup client software but thats been running for days), though 10 minutes before the blue-screen I installed the Drobo Dashboard 1.2.4. Perhaps thats the culprit…

I was planning to install Windows 7 beta on my Motion LE1600 next. Its late Sunday now though so it’ll probably have to wait until later in the week – I’m expecting Windows 7 to run nicely on the LE1600 whereas Vista was very sluggish.

Thanks again Scott! I really appreciate the heads up on the Taskbar.

My email is miralles at fiu dot edu

Thanks…

I was able to use Firefox to get a key, but as others mention the download button doesn’t work in FF. If you use the “official” links for getting the beta, it wants to use a Java-based download manager — which wouldn’t work properly in FF. I was able to get a key and the ISOs with FF using the direct links Neowin posted.

I’m running it in a VMware VM, so I can’t really speak for performance relative to Vista, but it runs fairly quickly even in a VM. I also had to cancel the Experience Index test because it was taking too long — seemed to freeze up doing something with media codecs. Not sure if that is a bug. Should probably report it.

I agree with Peter Norman that the Win 7 task bar leaves something to be desired. Using VMware there’s no Aero, so the UI runs in “Basic” mode. The task bar has a sickly greenish hue to it and the default white lettering on the icons is difficult to read.

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….

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.

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.

Details at http://www.segal.org/tablet/live/.