Windows 7 Beta Released To Public After Delay 848
Z80xxc! writes "The Windows 7 Beta release is now available for download by the general public, in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Microsoft had previously announced availability around 3 PM PST on Friday, but after unexpected numbers of people proved to be interested in the download, had to postpone it to add more servers."
Re:All that trouble... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course we do. If you work in a corporation or industry that runs windows then you know that everyone skipped Vista...so we're pretty much guarenteed that windows 7 WILL be adopted come hell or high water...
Download it now because you'll be dealing with in another year or two anyway.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:5, Insightful)
I will tell you why theres a 32bit version - because theres already a huge 32bit install base that may wish to upgrade, and by and large, the vast majority of your end user base doesnt need the benefits 64bit brings to the table!
If MS went 64bit only, they would be slated for it - they would be requiring an upgrade far in excess of any that previous Windows versions have required. Thats why there is a 32bit version - because this isnt about pushing the 64bit agenda.
Still no virtual desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 7 still doesn't have virtual desktops. OSX has had them for a few releases and every major desktop environment for Linux has had them since the beginning.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are you against 32-bit desktops, but ok with 32-bit netbooks? Only if *everyone* runs 64-bit windows will application development become simpler.
Re:As usual (Score:3, Insightful)
And they're abit pretentious on their download form: "*Whatâ(TM)s the primary client operating system that you use today?"
*Vista
*XP
*Early Version of Windows
*Other
Sheesh, If I was in marketing I'd want to at least differentiate between Linux and Mac users wanting to try out Windows 7.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Better yet, i can't believe people install the 64 bit version, only to get the same performance and software incompatibilities.
Unless you have over 4 gigs in ram it isn't worth it. It won't go faster if the software is not optimized to use the additional memory or cpu registers.
Here is my take on it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it remove, or add, more control of my machine?
If it adds to my current XP2 configuration, fine, I'll CONSIDER it as a replacement on this machine when XP finally goes belly up.
If it REMOVES any control of my machine, in any way, then it is just another Vista, in my mind.
I keep seeing benchmarking, eye-candy comparisons, etc, etc, but no real discussion of embedded DRM schemes, hidden processes, etc.
It is the stuff that I cannot see on my monitor that concerns me the most when considering a OS.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:1, Insightful)
Probably another "more bits is better" specs fanboy.
Having Dumped OS X, The Win 7 Beta Is Excellent (Score:0, Insightful)
Dumped OS X earlier this year and switched to Vista once SP1 came out and absolutely love it. The new features in Win 7 will be a nice upgrade in a year or so. But nothing must have to want to run a beta OS.
What I find amazing about Vista/Win 7 is that unless I'm simply the luckiest Windows user in the world every single virus and spyware problem have gone away. Even with massive and constant and out right bat shit insane Net behavior I haven't had a single virus or spyware/malware incident.
It will be nice to have the few places UAC still needs to be tweaked fixed in Win 7, but whatever they did over the past few years to fix the security nightmare Windows use to be worked. Amazingly well.
I still remember the days of 'owned in X minutes or seconds' years ago for Windows. No more.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Approximately 1 fuckton (1.21 metric fucktonnes) of people still only have 32-bit processors at their disposal.
That is all.
Re:Still no virtual desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because nobody's asked for them. It's not some grand conspiracy against you, and its not as if Microsoft doesn't have the technical resources to provide it, it's just not a very popular feature. Sorry.
Or are you just cherry-picking one of the (extremely few) GUI features Linux has that Windows doesn't have as some way of boosting your Linux-using cred? I guess that's more likely.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Released to public after delay? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish I had mod points for you. People on here and digg seem to think the solution to the problem yesterday would have been to release it on BitTorrent, when the bottleneck was the registration servers, not the download servers.
BitTorrent is a cool technology and everything, but people need to stop being so blind as to think it will solve all problems.
Re:One of the coolest features... (Score:3, Insightful)
Such innocence (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell me why the geek who fears his own shadow downloads an executable from a source like Pirate Bay.
Re:Site seems to break (Score:2, Insightful)
You also have to be downloading on a windows machine. You can't do it on a Mac. Apparently Microsoft thinks Macs still can't burn DVDs.
You also have to have a live account, so Microsoft can run up their member count with people who will never use it, increasing ad revenue.
You also have to have a lot of patience with bad website design. Primary link at the bottom and not the top? Check! Creating a new account sends you to MSN instead of back to the download page? Check! Needlessly requiring a download of a 3rd party program to do something the browser is inherently capable of? Check! Browser specific? Check! Pushing proprietary plug-in technology? Check!
They're probably going to spam me, too.
In one fell swoop, Microsoft reminds everybody who ditched windows exactly why they did it and has them pledging they will never go back.
They seriously need a mindset change in Redmond.
Re:What's wrong with bit torrent? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and ego. Don't forget the ego. "Downloading is bad". The day when Microsoft are going to admit that p2p has bright sides will be a cold day in hell.
Re:Here is my take on it.. (Score:1, Insightful)
If it REMOVES any control of my machine, in any way, then it is just another Vista, in my mind.
And you're just another sheep that believes what the cloud tells him. I am so sick of hearing people talk about DRM as if it's evil. Such thinking is flawed.
Here's the thing. DRM does not remove any control from you. None whatsoever. It is only a figment of your imagination. In fact, it gives you more control.
Consider this. Without DRM support, you can't play any DRM encoded files. With DRM, if you so choose, you can play any and all DRM encoded files, in addition to any and all non-DRM encoded files. This means that OS's without DRM give you LESS choice or control over any media you may purchase.
If you don't like DRM, fine, then don't buy DRM encoded media. It's your choice. Whether or not the OS supports DRM is irrelevant and doesn't take any control from you. It's entirely in your control whether or not you buy DRM encoded music or movies.
This is not a troll either, just use your brain and think about it logically and stop reacting so emotionally. And stop believing what everyone force feeds you.
Re:Here is my take on it.. (Score:3, Insightful)
DRM gives you control? Bullshit.
Yeah, having DRM on your system allows you to play DRM'd media, but only if the providers of that media think you paid for it. And you're trying to play it with approved software. And you don't try making a backup. And you don't have any programs installed that they don't like. And their DRM code isn't buggy.
That's control, all right, but the one in control sure ain't you.
Re:All that trouble... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have DOS apps then why not run them in DOSbox?
Re:As usual (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't that be far more valuable? I mean half of slashdot are downloading this while commenting here! I think Microsoft are afraid if they acknowledge the competition it will give them credibility
Re:Microsoft Download Web Page the USUAL MESS (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey Thanks!
BTW If anyone meets a Microsoft employee please take time to explain the URL concept to them and that it is possible to download something without six pages of JavaScript/ActiveX/Java.
Re:All that trouble... (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you tried 7?...Windows 7 isn't Vista, it's what Vista should always have been.
Have you tried Vista with SP1? 7's UAC pretty much just exposes to end-users what was already available via group policy in Vista RTM. In other words, no significant changes as far as the enterprise goes.
Vista drivers are exactly the same as Win7 drivers, so if you still can't get a proper non-broken Vista driver for any device, you're going to have the exact same problem with 7.
I agree that 7 is pretty decent, but I really don't see anything significantly different from Vista SP1.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:3, Insightful)
I still can't believe there will be a 32-bit version
PentiumIII
Pentium4 M
Pentium4 (pre EMT64 models)
Intel Duo (Pre Core 2)
Intel Solo
Intel Atom (Some Series)
Notice the last couple, I don't think people realize that there are shipping computers today that still have 32bit processors. If you look at computers in the last year you can find everything with some of the Intel Duo or Solo pre-x64 versions, like Mac-Mini etc...
Also there is Windows Embedded that is updated for 7, running full versions of Win7 on things like picture frames and routers. (Yes XP embedded is probably in a device in your house that you don't even realize) - And no this is not CE Embedded.
So why a 32bit version? Because Windows/NT works well on different architectures and ports rather easily, and with the client/server kernel subsystem technology, a Win32/Win64 subsystem model is not hard to maintain along side a standard 32bit version.
I saw a post like this before on here, it was an OS X user first insisting that OS X was 64bit, then after they Wiki'd it, they then came back and said that Snow Leopard would be ONLY 64bit and Apple was superior in moving OS technology to 64bit because it was only 64bit, which also was wrong.
There is no reason MS can't keep a 32bit version around for even another release or two if they want, it isn't rocket science to have the two versions and give people with older computers and older hardware without 64bit drivers something beyond XP, especially when Win7 is showing to be as fast or faster than XP and still keeping all the Vista features.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:3, Insightful)
And because my home machine is still an Athlon XP.
I know hard to believe. Everywhere else I use 64bit Vista or XP but since I don't game or work on my home PC it's effectively a nettop.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:3, Insightful)
All of our workstations and servers have 8GB of RAM. We do 3D rendering. So when you have 80million polygons and there are 100million photons bouncing around and millions and millions of raytrace calls plus millions of particles all interacting... you need a lot of ram.
Also when a single frame is 120MB uncompressed and you want to play back a short sequence to review in full quality prepare to see your RAM cache get filled very very quickly.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:2, Insightful)
You really are dense are you? Are you arguing with your nerdpost that the need for 64-bit is common among most computer users? We get it, the work being done at your place where you are the IT janitor require more than 4 GB of RAM. Fuck you and fuck everyone. I fucking hate the selfimportant nerds posting here sometimes. Fuck.
Re:Microsoft Download Web Page the USUAL MESS (Score:3, Insightful)
``Blah Blah Blah. Look, Microsoft. This is easy. You give us a link, and we download it. Why do you have to drown something AS SIMPLE AS DOWNLOADING A FILE UNDER TONNES OF YOUR INSECURE ACTIVEX RUBBISH or even Java?''
I wonder the same thing about a great many website. These days, especially Youtube, Last.fm, and the like. Multimedia in web pages has worked for ages; there are tags that let you embed sound and video in pages that Just Work. But no, they have to do it through Flash, and it's taking people years to implement enough of Flash so that it works. And, in the end, what you get is some media that you _could_ have played in MPlayer, if only you had been able to get at it. Why make simple things so complicated???
Re:All that trouble... (Score:3, Insightful)
GP: "Party X shot themselves in the foot by performing action Y. That was stupid!"
P: "You're smoking crack! Action Y would be stupid! Party X would never do that!"
huh?
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Insightful)
Can somebody explain the "funny" to me?
Just about every XKCD comic strip I read comes off as absurd, rather than funny.
Re:Microsoft Download Web Page the USUAL MESS (Score:3, Insightful)
Control.
Re:All that trouble... (Score:5, Insightful)
In these cases isn't it reasonable to run a virtual machine on the computer with an instance of DOS X.XX installed on it? I had a small company I was helping out a while ago that wanted their staff to be able to have email and web browsing at their workstations, but their point of sale and contact management software were "Uber-Old" DOS apps that acted like your example. I installed the free version of VMWare Server on all their PC's and installed DOS in the virtual environment. Their "over-powered" computers that had just been running DOS and nothing else, now had full Win XP environments with Email, Web, etc. - as well as their proprietary DOS apps in the virtual machine.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:All that trouble... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All that trouble... (Score:2, Insightful)
Pidgin (and just about every other GNOME IM) encrypts using the default seesion keyring, and it is perfectly possible for sudo (or gksudo, or whatever) to have a magical thing called a 'time-out' so you don't have to enter your password all the time.
If you configure your system to have masochistic and paranoid security, don't be surprised when it... err... does!
Re:promised Vista rewrite (Score:3, Insightful)
Hello pretender-to-the-throne-of-me,
Rebuilt =/= rewritten.
Please try again later.
Re:Its just a service pack for Vista (Score:3, Insightful)
This is no different than Windows 2003 which came out a little while after XP and blew its socks off for performance.
News for you: Windows XP 64 is the 2003 codebase. Without the extra crap. Which is why it's better.
Now, reality check: it took Microsoft how many years to write Vista? And you're telling me that in one single year (a year that year saw hundreds of thousands of users whole-heartedly reject Vista) they manage to write a completely new OS?
Well, ain't that convenient . Anyone who thinks Windows 7 is anything more than a Service Pack for Vista needs to get their head examined. Why do you think your Vista drivers work in Windows 7?
This is just Microsoft's second attempt to shove Vista down everyone's throat. They're betting that because everyone completely rejected one OS, they won't have the balls to reject two releases.
It's like going to a restaurant, ordering a steak, then two hours later you're served a pile of dog crap. Then, when you send the plate back to the kitchen and demand a real meal, they re-heat the pile of dog shit and serve it to you again, thinking you can't possibly refuse the same shit twice, not after waiting so long.