Windows7 Beta

mimtarsden · January 12, 2009, 08:35:41 PM

Just incase anyone is interested I have been running RB2009 for a few days now on Windows 7 Beta (32Bit) and it seems to work very well.

Infact I believe it has fixed what I find to be the most annoying bug of not maximising properly from the task bar!

I did try to get it running under the 64 Bit version but the drivers are not digitally signed...

Tim.

AirNav Support · January 12, 2009, 08:43:07 PM

Nice to hear that :)

Deadcalm · January 13, 2009, 09:14:40 AM

It would be very interesting to hear of your general impression of Windows 7, and whether you'd consider it a logical step from XP without bothering with Vista...

DC

bratters · January 13, 2009, 10:19:24 AM

Quote from: Deadcalm on January 13, 2009, 09:14:40 AM
It would be very interesting to hear of your general impression of Windows 7, and whether you'd consider it a logical step from XP without bothering with Vista...

DC

Me too!!

mimtarsden · January 14, 2009, 08:27:53 PM

Well I never had that much of a problem with Vista personally especially after Service pack 1 came out and fixed a lot of the common bugs, but so far my experience so far of Windows 7 is positive.

I'd say if you didn't like Vista's interface / look and feel you still won't like Windows 7. A lot of the annoyances such as the dialogue boxes when you want to change anything have gone now, so it doesn't keep on asking for your permission to do stuff.

The user interface has been changed a little bit here and there, such as the task bar, but it's very similar in use to Vista it seems all the work has been done under the hood...

The system certainly feels quicker than Vista does, and although it doesn't seem to hog the resources quite as much, however, you still need quite a lot of memory At the moment I have Explorer and Radar box running and I'm using 1.49Gb of RAM!

Fortunately I'm lucky enough to have a very powerful PC and powerful graphics card etc.. If your PC was more than 3 or 4 years old with only a gig of RAM or no integrated graphics I'd suspect you'd probably have a less than stellar experience... just as with Vista.

Considering this is only the beta version I'm amazed at the stability I've had no crashes or glitches and I've been running it nonstop for nearly a week.

All in all if I was still running XP and thinking of upgrading I'd certainly hang on a few months and wait for the full release of Windows 7 and skip Vista.

Tim

bratters · January 14, 2009, 09:42:32 PM

"All in all if I was still running XP and thinking of upgrading I'd certainly hang on a few months and wait for the full release of Windows 7 and skip Vista"

That's me and that's just the sort of info/advice I wanted. Thanks very much for that mimtarsden.

All a bit off topic - apologies folks.

RodBearden · January 14, 2009, 10:20:14 PM

Don't apologise - interesting stuff!

Rod

Deadcalm · January 15, 2009, 09:27:42 AM

Yes, good stuff. Does anyone know if it's possible to acquire the Beta Windows 7 as an upgrade from XP? It might be worth a try as I've been loathe to have anything to do with Vista. It would be useful to be able to manage my 4GB RAM properly and efficiently.

DC

nortonbeak · January 15, 2009, 10:03:03 AM

Quote from: Deadcalm on January 15, 2009, 09:27:42 AM
Yes, good stuff. Does anyone know if it's possible to acquire the Beta Windows 7 as an upgrade from XP? It might be worth a try as I've been loathe to have anything to do with Vista. It would be useful to be able to manage my 4GB RAM properly and efficiently.

DC

As I understand it is only available as a full beta installation (free to first 2.5 million downloads) and can be found at

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx

mimtarsden · January 15, 2009, 02:49:31 PM

They dropped the 2.5 Million limit until 24th Jan!

Due to an enormous surge in demand, the download experience was not ideal so we listened and took the necessary steps to ensure a good experience. We have clearly heard that many of you want to check out the Windows 7 Beta and, as a result, we have decided remove the initial 2.5 million limit on the public beta for the next two weeks (thru January 24th). During that time you will have access to the beta even if the download number exceeds the 2.5 million unit limit.

You can do an Upgrade of Full install. Just remember to choose the 32bit version as there are no 64 Bit drivers available for RB!!

Tim.

Theo · January 15, 2009, 03:14:09 PM

in order to get rid of the anoying boxes you only have to make youre account got the same rights as the admin, then it wont bother you with any box @ all not even permission to do anything.

Simply turn of youre UAC, go to c:\ and grand youre account the propper rights.

Deadcalm · January 15, 2009, 04:01:18 PM

Just started the lengthy 2.5 Gb download process for W7 Beta - that should stretch my shaky satellite "broadband" to it's limits...

DC

Fenris · January 15, 2009, 06:48:57 PM

Quote from: Deadcalm on January 15, 2009, 09:27:42 AM
Yes, good stuff. Does anyone know if it's possible to acquire the Beta Windows 7 as an upgrade from XP? It might be worth a try as I've been loathe to have anything to do with Vista. It would be useful to be able to manage my 4GB RAM properly and efficiently.

DC

Are you downloading the 32bit version? If so note that a 32bit OS can only have a process using 2GB of memory as the other 2GB of the address space is for the kernel. It is possible to split 3 and 1, but that's not common and not available as standard on Windows.

Only 64bit OSs do this properly.

tarbat · January 15, 2009, 06:52:27 PM

I've now got Windows 7 beta up-and-running in VMware. Looks like Vista to me!!

Windows7 Beta

Theo

Fenris