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."
Released to public after delay? (Score:5, Funny)
They finally released it after a delay.
The delay?
They couldn't figure out how to upload the torrent to PirateBay.....
Re:Released to public after delay? (Score:5, Funny)
The delay?
They couldn't figure out how to upload the torrent to PirateBay.....
Not to worry; someone has already taken care of it [thepiratebay.org].
Re:Released to public after delay? (Score:5, Funny)
....oh, never mind. Make up your own joke.
Re:Released to public after delay? (Score:5, Informative)
Hah.
Bandwidth wasn't an issue at all for the downloads. The product key and website side of it was. I downloaded the 64bit client from Microsoft at noon yesterday in the middle of the feeding frenzy and still pulled it down at 1200KB/s which is the cap on my connection.
A torrent would not have solved it yesterday.
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.
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Such innocence (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell me why the geek who fears his own shadow downloads an executable from a source like Pirate Bay.
two license keys (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:two license keys (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:two license keys (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like they're assigning keys from a small pool so they're not unique for each person/installation. Both the 32 and 64 bit ISOs are also everywhere, so you can grab any torrent (the hashes match) and then try to register with one of the following keys:
7XRCQ-RPY28-YY9P8-R6HD8-84GH3
RFFTV-J6K7W-MHBQJ-XYMMJ-Q8DCH
482XP-6J9WR-4JXT3-VBPP6-FQF4M
D9RHV-JG8XC-C77H2-3YF6D-RYRJ9
JYDV8-H8VXG-74RPT-6BJPB-X42V4
4HJRK-X6Q28-HWRFY-WDYHJ-K8HDH
QXV7B-K78W2-QGPR6-9FWH9-KGMM7
6JKV2-QPB8H-RQ893-FW7TM-PBJ73
GG4MQ-MGK72-HVXFW-KHCRF-KW6KY
TQ32R-WFBDM-GFHD2-QGVMH-3P9GC
Of course, the public beta won't get you any free stuff from MS for bug reports so you might as well just rearm it a couple of times and then get the RTM version or install GNU/Linux in disgust.
One of the coolest features... (Score:5, Informative)
http://it-experts.dk/blogs/rsj/archive/2009/01/01/booting-windows-7-from-a-vhd-file.aspx [it-experts.dk]
After playing with it for a day or so, I think Libraries are interesting but I need to play with them some more before committing. The taskbar is nice, and works well - several of the 'cute' features are well thought out, such as the 'Show Desktop' functionality now being a small sliver of the taskbar on the right hand side, which if you hover over makes all windows 100% translucent, and if you click it minimises everything. Each 'window preview' on an application instance icon in the task bar does something similar if you hover on it - only keeps that apps windows opaque. Nice.
It seems very stable - the installer was the Windows 2008 one, it literally asks what language you want, where you want it installed and do you want to upgrade or fresh install. Then its away and installing - everything else is done afterward.
IE8 has issues on this website - lots of refreshing to a blank page for seemingly no reason. Not ready for the prime time - Chrome and Firefox work fine though.
One thing that struck me, and other people I have talked about, is that due to the focus on icons for the task bar now (instead of the label, as Win95 to Vista uses), some people are really going to have to polish their icons (Putty - the icon is nice when its small, but it sucks at larger sizes - at the moment Im using the Kterm icon for Putty!).
While I cant say Ive heavily stress tested it, theres been no show stoppers for me as of yet. I'm currently using it as my main desktop (aside from my OSX systems), so we shall see how we get on in the coming months.
Re:One of the coolest features... (Score:5, Funny)
Nice post and tidbits there, just one tiny nitpick.
which if you hover over makes all windows 100% translucent
At what point is something considered 100% translucent? 99.90% transparent? 99.99999999%? =)
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So, outside of your 'fucking' orgy...
What is so bad about drive letters really? Is C:\ really so different from hda1, sda1 or /volumes/? I haven't actually played around with it much, but I would almost assume that drives are accessible without directly accessing the corresponding letter within Vista/7 it's just not fully implimented yet...
I have no problem whatsoever with using backslashes, programmatically or manually... I prefer to think of \.\.\ as "into the computer" whereas /././ is "outside" the comp
Unsupported browser? (Score:3, Funny)
I am running Konqueror on KDE (in FreeBSD). I can't imagine why they wouldn't want to test that combination for their web site.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You could just grab the ISO file directly:
32-bit [microsoft.com]
64-bit [microsoft.com]
Re:Unsupported browser? (Score:4, Funny)
you can't imagine why they would do that? LOL!
-------> (joke)
You
It seems you are not familiar with sarcasm [merriam-webster.com]. Are you new here?
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: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:Still no virtual desktop (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. This was explicitly requested (and rejected by MS VP in charge of Windows Steve Sinofsky) on the Engineering Windows 7 blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/ [msdn.com] (I can't find the exact place where he said they weren't going to do it right now, but he did say so). It won't be happening in Windows 7. Sorry.
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I haven't tried it, but some of the Linux administrators at work just download the add-on from Sysinternals.
It doesn't come with the operating system but it is free, produced by the vendor and most people seem happy with it. Of course this only applies if you actually want to use virtual desktops over slamming Windows - but if so here is the link:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881.aspx [microsoft.com]
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[citation needed]
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Whoa, whoa, whoa.
You're talking about a different sort of desktop. The "Virtual Desktop" that we're talking about could be as simple as:
0) Make N lists, each of which represents a "desktop".
1) Minimize all windows that are not in the list for the current desktop.
2) Remove taskbar entries for the affected windows.
3) Add a system tray icon (or keyboard shortcut or whatever) that allows one to switch through the N desktops.
4) Add a right-click context menu to the title bar of the active window (or a keyboard s
Site seems to break (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it just me or does this download break on every browser but IE?
I tried:
Anyone else get similar results?
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What web browsers support the Windows 7 Beta download experience?
Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 support the Windows 7 Beta download experience.
Typical MS. Does this inspire confidence in their products for you?
My experience with Windows Hitler. (Score:5, Funny)
I've installed Windows 7 32-bit Pre-Pre-Release (build 7000 for inquiring minds) on my gaming machine and it works surprisingly well. Ventrilo took a bit of fiddling to work right, but other than that it worked better out of the box than XP Service Pack 3 does. It didn't need any extra drivers, although it did prompt me to update the Graphics card driver, which it happily did automatically.
Then the trouble started.
Since I had several firefox tabs open, I opted to put the computer into Hibernation for the night so I could continue with them this morning. It obliged surprisingly quickly and shut off the system power. Fans went off, case lights went off, and the USB devices lost power. The system was off. Off I Tell you!
I went to bed. While reading Paris in the 20th Century [amazon.com] by Jules Verne, almost an hour after I had shut off the machine, quietly returned to life! I thought that some bump or vibration or some minuscule cosmic ray had activated the case button and quickly dismissed it as some one-off odd event. I went back to reading about Le Grande Entrepôt.
About a chapter later, I don't know how much time had passed, the beast roared back to life with the ferocity of all fans at one hundred percent and the squeal of the system speaker! Twice in one night was too much for coincidence. I put the machine into hibernation once again, unplugged the power supply and resigned myself that if it came back to life once more, I would call a priest for an exorcism. (which would be quite a phone call, considering that I do not frequent churches)
Tonight, I will be sleeping with a copy of dBaN [dban.org] by my side.
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Then I need to still give full disclosure: I -am- a senior .NET software developer for a close Microsoft partner (though its a company that does NOT operate directly in the IT/Software field). So I am potentially still biaised. If it helps, I used to hate Microsoft like the plague and ran Linux only for years, long before Ubuntu and
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.
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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.
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From the days of installing "Heroes of Might and Magic 3", and promptly having SecuROM PERMANENTLY turn off my CD Burner...to installing "Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3" and having it TRY and do the exact same thing, 10 years later.
Yeah. DRM has been good to me for quite some time.
The only difference here is that Microsoft is trying to do the same thing with the operating system.
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http://www.osronline.com/showthread.cfm?link=97522 [osronline.com]
In short, there's NO WAY to disable driver checks now without resorting to test mode.
General public SHOULD be able to install unsigned drivers. It's not your right to tell them what NOT to do. Anyway, inability to install drivers is certainly a limitation compared to WXP.
If you disagree, then please explain how freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.
direct download links (Score:5, Informative)
Direct download links:
32-bit
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.ISO [microsoft.com]
64-bit
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.ISO [microsoft.com]
I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Why is this story tagged "hitler"?
xkcd WHAT?
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Have you installed Windows 7 Beta?
Did your computer grow a Charlie Chaplin mustache, and goose-around the room, ranting nonsense?
Did your computer declare all non-Microsoft devices in your house to be "racially impure?"
Did your computer invade Poland? France? Bomb England?
Did Tom Cruise make a half-assed effort to assassinate your computer?
Thank you, for participating in this Windows 7 early experiences survey.
Microsoft Download Web Page the USUAL MESS (Score:5, Interesting)
However if you edit the download web page source you will find an embedded JavaScript link: http://wb.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/ [microsoft.com].... copy and paste that and you'll get another web page telling you:
" If you have not already installed ActiveX control or the JavaTM applet, an information box will appear in your Microsoft Internet Explorer browser prompting you to install "ActiveX control:... If the Download Manager can not install the ActiveX control or the JavaTM applet in your browser, you may have system restrictions. If you have system restrictions, please: * Download products using the Web Browser method * Contact your organizationâ(TM)s Administrator to download products using the Download Manager method"
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? You've got a separate ProductID you assign people, so what is your problem here (beyond your own myopic bureaucratic stupidity?)
Well okay Microsoft. I can't be bothered wading through your hopeless web programmers inane crap, so I'll wait for the torrent to appear and use my ProductID with that.
PS. I tried Vista for two months, thought it was total crap deleted it and reinstalled XP. I gave you another chance but you're really trying my patience. Please fire everyone who worked on Vista (especially your marketing) and your goober web programmers. They are really getting on my nerves.
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ugh.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.ISO [microsoft.com]
There, that works in all browsers. You just had to dig a little bit. (thats the 64 bit version)
Re: (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.
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``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 yea
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Control.
Re:Its just a service pack for Vista (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Its just a service pack for Vista (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Its just a service pack for Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this part in particular says it all.
One indication of just how neatly Microsoft is trying to thread this needle is the fact that the server unit is saying its version of Windows 7 will be a minor release. The product that had been code-named "Windows 7 Server" is getting the designation Windows Server 2008 R2. The "R2" designation has in the past been used for very minor updates to Microsoft products.
Re:Its just a service pack for Vista (Score:5, Funny)
But what about Mojave? Mojave's AWESOME!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
http://awesome.naquadah.org/
Re:Its just a service pack for Vista (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that Windows 2008 came out over a year after Vista was launched. And it uses an updated kernel version.
A more accurate description would be that Windows 7 is actually a service pack for Windows 2008 which is actually Windows 7.
This is no different than Windows 2003 which came out a little while after XP and blew its socks off for performance. Windows 2003 was still in my mind the best windows for performance. Even in 3D Performance I saw 100% increases in framerates. I was shocked and awed.
It would seem that Microsoft is sneaking in Windows 2008 R2 + User friendly UI as windows 7. Which I'm fine with because it wouldn't make any sense to reinvent the wheel if they've invested a lot of time and money into the kernel.
Also a large amount of work being put into Windows 7 is in the user interface department. Easier networking, More features for the home user etc etc.. none of these are useful for Windows 2008. So Without ALL of the UI work being done to make it a better operating system for the user (beyond performance enhancements that 2008 ALREADY HAS) I can see why R2 is a minor release.
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.
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If you have DOS apps then why not run them in DOSbox?
Re:All that trouble... (Score:4, Informative)
Did you know that some REALLY old school DOS apps bypassed the OS and wrote files straight to the hard drive? That's the kind of behavior the GP is alluding to. I've seen it first hand... dang, have I been dealing with computers that long. How old am I? Oh...
That's one example, but there are PLENTY of really old DOS apps that want direct hardware access -- and plenty of companies still using some of them.
I don't mean to sound down on DOSbox, I'm just answering your question: the answer is that it won't always do the job.
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:All that trouble... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
iTunes. 3d-accelerated games. Wine doesn't quite cut it in every case, so I still end up using a bit of Windows...
Not Vista, of course...
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I was surprised that Parallels actually uses Wine's Direct3D implementation on the Mac to provide D3D to Windows installations.
Wine has gone from "dancing bear" to actually working, and surprising me when it doesn't.
Re:All that trouble... (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you tried 7? That early alpha that leaked from PDC worked better than Vista ever has for me, never mind a proper beta.
Windows 7 isn't Vista, it's what Vista should always have been. Yes, it largely copies Vista's UI, but it also makes a lot of nice but subtle enhancements on the original, including performance and not such an insanely overbearing UAC security model. In my limited testing, 7's UAC is much closer to how it shows up in OS X and Linux, at least in terms of frequency (whether the security model it represents is actually solid remains to be seen).
Assuming that major hardware manufacturers don't fuck it up with bad drivers again, anyways. In my experience, that's largely what killed Vista. We're going on two years now I think, and I still can't get a proper not-broken Vista driver from nVidia, on a then-new GPU.
As a Mac user... I certainly won't say that 7 is perfect (nor is OS X), but it certainly shows that Microsoft has been taking a lot of the bad feedback for Vista to heart. And quite frankly, I'd like to see heavy 7 adoption among Windows users if for no other reason than it comes bundled with the standards-compliant IE8.
Re:All that trouble... (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming that major hardware manufacturers don't fuck it up with bad drivers again, anyways. In my experience, that's largely what killed Vista. We're going on two years now I think, and I still can't get a proper not-broken Vista driver from nVidia, on a then-new GPU.
Uh, you DO realize that the drivers were never released because Microsoft refused to allow developers access to the codebase so they could CREATE drivers, right?
Microsoft wanted A LOT of money, and all kinds of crazy agreements that only benefitted Microsoft. The developers did all they could to work around MS.
Ultimately, it was Microsoft that shot themselves in the foot, in addition to Vista being crap.
Re:All that trouble... (Score:4, Informative)
You're smoking crack. From a strategic standpoint, why would Microsoft do *anything* to prevent the creation of solid drivers for their OS? Can you think of a single reason, you paranoid loon?
No, what happened is that companies like nVidia, Canon (my personal thorn-in-the-side: the LiDE scanner works, where's the fucking driver?!) wanted to save time and money, and possibly get more hardware sales, by being shitty to their customers. That's all there is to it.
Re: (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:All that trouble... (Score:4, Informative)
Geesh, if I didn't notice your fairly low UID, I would've guess your to be around 15 or so going on that statement.
They dropped the old support because they (and many other companies) expected to the masses to keep trudging the Microsoft Treadmill and go out and buy Vista in droves just like they did for 98 & XP. As we all know, that didn't happen. People weren't enticed by the "Oooo! Look! Flipping Windows and a tiny Start button!" like Microsoft and friends assumed they would. People haven't even gone out to buy Microsoft's "Mojave" like they were supposed to either, for that matter.
Personally, I'm going to find things very interesting when VII actually hits the streets. Will the masses jump? Are the masses just as tired of dancing the Redmond Slide like most of us /. type folks are?
Re:All that trouble... (Score:5, Informative)
And what's the "Forced Upgrade" percent in that? I bought a new laptop in June. It shipped with Vista. Am I in that 21% even though I've booted to it a grand total of 6 times and haven't booted to it since August or so? I "bought" a Vista license, but only because I was forced to.
I tried to return my Vista license. Circuit City, after having to call two or three other Regional Managers (not the lowly multi-store supervisors, corporate managers) told me they refused to give me the money owed for a Vista License. I showed the Store Manager the EULA that states in the very first paragraph that I can return it to the store of purchase for a full refund. They refused to honor it. They said I had to go to Microsoft. After calling Microsoft three times (their server kept hanging up on me...), told me they wouldn't honor it since it states I have to go to the store of purchase.
Guess what. Circuit City, after I told them all that, told me "O-Well" (yes a direct quote), and hung up.
So now I'm in the 21% of Vista License holders?!? Pfffft... That's just corporate spreadsheet fixing...
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Um... I type my root password in Linux more often then I hit UAC in Vista (never mind Win7). It might have something to do with the fact that I'm constantly installing things like different wine snapshots and trying different drivers in hopes of getting my webcam working right (it used to work with the universal driver, and no longer does. No clue why, but I'm trying to get back there), but that doesn't change the fact that principle of least privilege is more of a pain in Linux than in Vista (for me). Then
Re:All that trouble... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm firmly in favor of the upgrade. iTunes won't work right in Windows XP x64, while it works great in Windows 7. There are a still a few hiccups (it's beta), but it definitely feels like an upgrade.
So far, I've tested the following apps to work perfectly in Windows 7:
- Mozilla Firefox 3.0 (with AdBlock, Flash, and Acrobat Reader)
- Acrobat Reader 9
- GIMP 2.6
- OpenOffice 3
- iTunes (Vista x64)
I can't yet get the drivers for my HP Color LaserJet 2600n working (they're installed, but all tasks are stuck in "pending").
Next up I'm going to install VisualStudio 2K8 and see how that works.
Re:All that trouble... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:All that trouble... (Score:5, Funny)
iTunes won't work right in Windows XP x64, while it works great in Windows 7.
Don't worry, I'm sure that will be fixed by the final release. :)
Re:All that trouble... (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone who had bothered to read it would have seen:
When MP3 files are added (either manually or automatically) to either the Windows Media Player or the Windows Media Center library, or if the file metadata is edited with Windows Explorer, several seconds of audio data may be permanently removed from the start of the file. This issue occurs when files contain thumbnails or other metadata of significant size before importing or editing them.
And the steps:
4. Read the article and install the update available at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139391 [microsoft.com].
5. Once you have installed the update, you can safely reset the read/write status of your MP3 files to your preference.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:5, Informative)
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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.
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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:4, Informative)
That's misleading at best. The Atom netbooks released in 2008 had N270 Atoms. "Atom implements the x86 (IA-32) instruction set; x86-64 is so far only activated for the Atom 230 and 330 desktop models. N and Z series Atom models cannot run x86-64 code." (Wikipedia)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Go to "System" -> "Administration" -> "Create a USB startup disk"
Oh, oops, forgot this was Windows we were talking about... ;)
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answer this and you will answer your own question
why do they still make 32bit versions of linux?
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:Why 32-bit? (Score:4, Funny)
You geeks and your fancy kitchens. My disposal is just a simple on/off switch hooked up to a motor. No 32-bit logic in there...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
and they are all to slow to run windows 7 anyway. what's your point?
Show me a cpu made in the last three years that doesn't support 64 bit
Well, it's 3 years and 5 days old, but close enough...
Intel Core [wikipedia.org]
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.
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.
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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I hope at least OEM will produce ONLY 64 bit machines, except in the special cases of netbooks and the like. I'd like to see a push for all new machines to be 64bit, with 64bit OS. Microsoft could still sell 32 bit, but leave that for the upgraders.
If I were them I'd market it as Windows 7, and then you'd have Windows 7 32-bit as a special edition (like XP Pro and XP Pro x64, but in the reverse).
Re:Why 32-bit? (Score:5, Interesting)
32-bit version is for the people with machines that cannot handle Vista. I think
that Vista was the perfect advertisement for Windows 7 (better than Seinfeld...)
as a shitload people and companies with XP *will* upgrade to Windows 7. Not OSX
and not Linux. Sad but that's the future. I hate the fact but Microsoft wins again.
Facts: :)
* After booting Windows 7 takes around 330 megabytes of memory
* I still haven't disabled UAC (after a week) it is actually quite non-intrusive
* it is pretty goddamn fast (still a subjective view, but that's what counts)
* file copying is fast, usually 30 Mb/s
* haven't crashed once after a week
I have a side-by-side installation of Vista, Win7 and XP on the PC just so I
can compare them.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's actually more responsive than XP on some things, which is impressive. It seems to have a definite "Mac-like" feel to it now as well...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Long Mode is so overrated (Score:4, Informative)
"I still can't believe there will be a 32-bit version."
I still can't believe people's obsession with Long Mode.
Well, actually, I can, simply because 64 is larger than 32, and thus 64-bit equates to "better" in the eyes of lots of people. But lots of people are fools, too.
But seriously, the majority of computer users have absolutely no need for Long Mode. They do things like browse the web, forward email, watch YouTube, and look at porn. You barely need Protected Mode for that.
The scenarios benefiting from Long Mode would be:
That's about it, really.
Most people are concerned solely with the amount of memory Windows reports in the System Properties dialog, and get their panties in a bunch over 700 MB or so of "missing" RAM. While I can understand wanting one's OS to be able to use all the RAM one paid for, most of these people aren't actually ever going to use that much of RAM. They just want their number to be bigger, because that obviously reflects on the size of their testicles. That's why they bought 4 GiB of RAM in the first place.
But even then, Long Mode is not needed to win the penis-length contests. Proper support for PAE would solve the problems. Just about any Intel-compatible CPU made in the past ten years supports PAE. With PAE, the processor can directly address up to 64 GiB of RAM in i386 Protected Mode, even though each user task (process) is still limited to a 4 GiB virtual address space. But it's very rare for a single task to actually need that much.
Of course, on Win i386, it's a little worse than that. Processes are limited to 2 GiB of user address space (with the kernel having the same 2 GiB in every process). But even 2 GiB is a lot of memory. Even Firefox only needs half a gig or so. ;-)
Win i386 actually uses PAE, sort-of. It needs to obtain the NX (No Execute) bit in page tables, for "DEP" (Data Execution Prevention). But Win i386 still limits physical addresses to under 4 GiB to keep crappy drivers from crashing the system. Since Microsoft's all about driver signing these days, they could just add an flag to the driver signature indicating it's qualified to work above 4 GiB, and have an OS boot option or something which allowed all memory to be used. Refuse to load PAE unqualified drivers in that mode.
Meanwhile, Long Mode is not without drawbacks. Long Mode, for those who don't know, is the processor mode AMD introduced which enables native 64-bit virtual addressing. But when in Long Mode, the processor can't do 16-bit Virtual Mode at all. There's still a lot of Win16 code floating around in the Windows world, sadly. Long Mode also means potential compatibility issues with crappy 32-bit code. Sure, it's crappy code, but I've found most code is crappy code. There can be performance costs, too (64-bit everywhere means more stuff than 32-bit most places), although they're minor and may be offset by equally possible performance gains (instruction architecture improvements such as more general-purpose registers).
Since this is Slashdot, I have to mention that Linux i386 supports PAE just fine, and has no problem working with more than 4 GiB of RAM, making Linux x86-64 even less interesting than Win x86-64. Linux also doesn't manage memory the same way as Windows, so the user/kernel split doesn't apply. So Linux x86-64 has all the compatibility problems of Long Mode, with even fewer benefits.
Re:Long Mode is so overrated (Score:4, Funny)
You know, there have been quite a lot of digital STDs over the years. Might want to think again about using protected mode.
Re:Long Mode is so overrated (Score:5, Informative)
I'm more interested in the extra registers that you code can assume exists on 64-bit x86s. Also, managing a larger than 32-bit addressing space in 32-bit mode can lead to a lot of extra instructions, since you can't use 64-bit registers to hold the data.
So yeah, I'm interested in 64-bit mode. Because it should help my machine run more efficiently. And Vista and Windows 7 don't support Win16 apps, so it isn't going to be a problem that win16 cannot use a hardware acceleration mode while running in 64-bit mode.
In the end, your argument is simply "why do we need 64-bit mode, we can do anything we want in 32-bit mode with a little extra work". Yeah, that's true about 16-bit mode too. It can do everything 32-bit mode can do (even without protected mode), and yet we switched away from 16-bit to 32-bit.
64-bit mode is on the rise because apps and OSes are starting to creak a bit with the limitations of 32-bit mode, and programmers being lazy beasts, would rather just change a compile option instead of write a bunch of paged data management code (a la EMS,XMS,EEMS and the old DOS extenders).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
64 is larger than 32, and thus 64-bit equates to "better"
Not just "better", "twice as better"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm seriously thinking that the Mojave experiment may actually have been brought from the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't forget, XP is 5.1 and Windows 2000 is 5.0. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, it's pretty "minor", but that doesn't mean that a lot of work has been done on the OS.
I'm not sure how much you've used Vista, but 7 is definitely leaps and bounds ahead of it in terms of performance. Everything else may seem somewhat of a minor tweak and undeserving of the "7" branding, but from a User's point of view, the difference really is night and day.
It may look a bit like Vista, it may act a bit like Vista, but it
Re: (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 thin
Re: (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: (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:As usual (Score:5, Informative)
The URI for the ISO is in the page source.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They're using an Akamai download manager, which sucks ass... depending on your Firefox configuration, it won't even show up at all (not even a "Firefox blocked this application" bar.) I think you need Java to get it to run... but I'm not sure since I refuse to install Java. (I got it downloading correctly in IE, but it uses an ActiveX widget which is almost as irritating as Java.)
Anyway, blame Akamai, not Microsoft. Although I guess blame Microsoft for picking Akamai...
Re:What web browsers support the Windows 7 Beta do (Score:5, Informative)
Also: got full speed on my connection during the entire download.
Re: (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: (Score:3, Informative)
64bit:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.ISO [microsoft.com]
32bit:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.ISO [microsoft.com]
You just need to look for the direct link. The main page uses a download manager like MSDN, but its the only reason, and if you dig a bit you find the direct downloads. It seems to be up and down in getting
That is because.. (Score:5, Informative)
MS is typically paranoid about really really old OSes, and uses a layout with a iso9660 visible file:
mount -t iso9660 -o loop 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.iso t
[root@localhost Download]# ls t
readme.txt
[root@localhost Download]# umount t
[root@localhost Download]# mount -t udf -o loop 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.iso t
[root@localhost Download]# ls t
autorun.inf bootmgr efi sources upgrade
boot bootmgr.efi setup.exe support