I downloaded and installed the Windows 7 Beta (64 bit) last week and thought I would start a thread on it.

My motherboard has an onboard RAID controller and I was very pleasantly surprised that 7 recognized it correctly and installed itself without any issues. Not even XP would do that without going through the F6 routine to install the RAID drivers.

The old familiar blue installation screen is history too, which I really like. That was so 90’s LOL. This is beta so I am not expecting perfection, but so far everything has worked without issue or complaint.

The biggest change that jumps out to me is the taskbar. Microsoft changed it quite a bit and it will take me some time to adjust. They also got rid of the kludged gadget side bar. Gadgets are still available to you, but you can now place them where you want.

I like 7 … so far. It boots very fast and shuts down fast too. But I have few apps installed at this point, so I’m sure that will change over time.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft prices 7. I don’t mind paying for software, but 7 is really a fixed version of Vista and I will have issues shelling out $200 - $300 USD for it.

Has anyone else tried either the 32 or 64 bit versions of Windows 7 yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

Will

Machine Specs (Dell XPS 600; older system but still good)

3.46 GHz Pentium D

4 GB RAM

2 SLI GeForce 8800 GTs

2 WD Raptor 150 GB hard drives in RAID 0

27” Monitor

(I will be building a new Core I7 in the very near future)

I installed the 32 bit version on a P4-2.53Ghz/1.25GB RAM/128MB AGP/3x80GB HDD (1 each for XP/Vista/W7 in a tri boot configuration)

The only issue I have with hardware is the old Creative sound card is not supported in W7 or Vista.

I am not sure I like the new 'superbar', I prefer the taskbar with Quick Launch.

Quick launch can be enabled, but it is a convoluter process to do so.

I also prefer classic menus. Almost every computer I see the user has switched to classic, why MS would remove it is a mystery.

It definately seems faster than Vista, though a little slower than XP on the same hardware.

So far it seems to be what Vista should have been.

MS is going to have a hard time convincing me pay $200 per machine to 'ugrade' from the joke they call Vista.

12 of the 14 machines I have on my home network are on XP Pro (even the new dual core I built last month).

I have setup a couple dozen older machines at work on Linux and they work fine for limited surfing, email and terminal emulation.

I wouldn't use it on my personal/home machine, but it works fine for business.

I have recently installed Windows 7 Beta on both my desktop and my laptop.

I rin x64 version on my desktop and it works really well, much faster than vista x64 which is also installed on it. Only trouble I had was installing Creative X-Fi drivers. But you can do this in vista compatibility mode and they work just fine! My desktop is

CPU: Core 2 Quad 2.4gig

RAM: 8GB DDR2 800

GfX: Nvidia 9600 with 512MB (i think)

HDD: 500GB samsung

My laptop is a rather old HP, 1.6GHz Pentium M with 2Gb of RAM. It ran vista 32 before and it wa usable, but slow at starting. Windows 7 32 bit is much quicker and faster, and I can even have the Aero transparent windows.

Model HP Compaq nc6000

CPU: Pentium M 1.6GHz

RAM: 2GB DDR 333

GfX: ATi Mobility Radeon w/32Mb RAM

HDD: 120GB samsung (replaced orgignal)

Hoping that microsoft don't charge too much for this new version when it arrives!

Col

I'd suggest installing Win7 Beta in a VM (Virtual Machine) -- that way you don't need to partition/format a Hard Drive.

(For those that do not know, a "Virtual Machine", or VM, is basically a full seperate computer that runs in a Window on your Desktop (or in Full Screen mode if you want). In other words, a "PC Emulator" for Windows. The VM's Hard Drive is a file or folder on your computer's actual Hard Drive. The VM will use your computer's CD/DVD Rom or an .ISO file as it's DVD Rom Drive. You can install any operating system you like in the VM).

Using a VM will let you get the look-and-feel and experience of the new Operating System -- although it may run a little slower. Some of the VMs will even let you run an x64 (64-Bit) VM on your 32-Bit computer.

The only recent VM I have used so far is Microsoft Virtual PC. It is a free download and very easy to set up and use. The VM runs pretty quickly too, I have been using it to run some old Dos and Win9x games that won't run in WinXP:

http://www.microsoft.com/virtualpc

Two other free VMs are Bochs and QEMU. I have not tried either of these yet. The advantage of them is they will work on Linux, Unix, and Mac as well as Windows. The disadvantage of them is a little harder to set up and get working:

Bochs: http://bochs.sourceforge.net

QEMU: http://bellard.org/qemu/

Also check out this site for some info on how to set up QEMU and get it working to emulate a regular PC: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-qemu/

Another one to check out is VMWare: http://www.vmware.com

VMWare comes in two separate parts. "VMWare Player" will run a VM, but you can not create a VM with it. It is free. The other part, "VMWare Workstation" is used to create a VM -- it is NOT free...! However, there are two ways around this which will allow you to create VMWare VM's for free:

The first is VMWare's "Converter" utility, which will create a VM based on a real computer you have: http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

The second is with websites such as EasyVMX: http://www.easyvmx.com/

These sites will create a VMWare file for you, which you can then open with VMWare Player and install the OS of your choice into the VM.

I have downloaded the Windows 7 Beta, but have not installed it yet. I am planning to try installing it in a VM to see how that works out probably sometime next week (no time for it now). Or if the VM doesn't work, then on an actual computer.

Once I've installed Win7 and had a chance to play around with it a bit I will put up another post to know what I think of it.

Prudence (imported) wrote: Sat Jan 24, 2009 4:30 pm Another one to check out is VMWare: http://www.vmware.com

I've used WMWare Workstation extensively (now progressed to VMWare ESX at work) and would recommend it. They offer a 30 day evaluation (https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?p=workstation-w) if you want to try it out.