Print - Windows 7 Public Beta Comes Roaring Out of the Gates

Demand for the public beta version of Windows 7 was so great that Microsoft actually had capacity issues on Friday. But the software giant opened the floodgates over the weekend, opening up its next operating system to millions of users for the first time. In fact, demand is so great that Microsoft has temporarily removed its previously-stated 2.5 million download limit: For two weeks, Microsoft will allow anyone who wants the Windows 7 Beta to download it.

"Thank you for your enthusiasm, interest and willingness to beta test," a posting on the Windows team blog reads. "It has been great to see the positive early reviews and feedback. As you know, this is a beta product. We are working hard to get Windows 7 ready and right. Your input is a critical part of that process. Thank you!"

Excitement about the Windows 7 Beta has surprised even Microsoft, which has been stung in recent years by largely perceived problems with Windows Vista, the current Windows version. Reactions to the new OS, in sharp contrast to those for Vista, have been almost universally positive. Clearly, Microsoft already has a hit on its hands.

I've been working with the Windows 7 Beta since last month and have already written several articles, including a lengthy review, about this new release. For more information about the Windows 7 Beta, including information about how you can download it yourself, please refer to the SuperSite for Windows.
http://www.winsupersite.com/

apple better start the next smear and FUD campaign before it is too late. It would be interesting to know if there are more users of this beta after a week than macOSX's users world-wide. My guess is there are.

Speaking of Apple. I remember all of the Windows supporters on this site (and even Paul) saying that "Leopard" was a $125 service pack and Apple was wrong for charging people. Is not Windows 7 an equivalent upgrade to Vista?

hi paul ,, nice to see you here :) i love your site too my question is , i read in another site that microsoft will extend the activiation & download time for two weeks !! is that right ?? so we cant activate windows 7 after 24 Jan? hope not :(

You can activate 7 up until the beta end cycle. What MS did do was to extend for two weeks the opportunity to download and get product keys, and removed the previously arbitrary 2.5 million download cap. You can still activate after that, but you would have already needed to have the keys and download done before that time.

what would sadden me if it has become very compatible because MS did what it did with Win95 and WinXP... - if they did magic to accommodate the lousy programming of popular software makers.

I was not one of those folks criticizing Apple for charging for Leopard, but I would definitely not criticize Microsoft for charging for Win 7. I have a Mac that somebody else installs updates on, and from the outside, I would be hard-pressed to tell you the difference between Tiger and Leopard. Leopard may have involved lots of less visible internal changes, though. For Win 7, the UI is very different from Vista, but the "guts" of Win 7 have not been redesigned in a major way AFAIK relative to Vista. Win 7 also offers and brand new hardware-accelerated 2D graphics API, Direct2D/DirectWrite (which Vista users will get for free). And, if you can believe the demo, Home Networking has been completely redone in Win 7 so that it will actually work. So I think Microsoft has definitely done enough for Win 7 to be worth charging for. If Vista told us anything, though, it was that Microsoft does not have the power to "force" people to upgrade Windows. If an upgrade is not compelling, they won't buy it. Vista was not compelling. I thing for a lot more people, Win 7 will be.

I have been very disappointed in Windows 7. I have a test pc which I have re-built from Vista ultimate to Windows 7 and it's now slower than before. The PC is a Intel Quad core with 3GB RAM and 32 Bit Windows 7 runs about 5% slower than Vista ultimate 32 bit. on standard tasks, Video encoding is even slower and boot time is about the same. As yet haven't tried 64 Bit. Has anyone?