News Windows 7 Beta leaked over BitTorrent

This is why we use virtual machines to test these things.

But it's really not that sketchy tbh. Particularly not for anything stressful. I don't think anyone would have advocated switching to using it as your primary OS, however.

 

VM software very usefull for testing this stuff allso not bad when you got 8gb of ram and can run an bunch of VMs with out running out of ram

they updated task manager to now show available ram (dono why thay added Free ram in taskman on vista (that most likey started all that all my ram is been used up crap and should remove free completely from windows 7), Resource Monitor to Show users who do not understand ram usage to much (click on the memory tab in Res Mon)

seems to work very well for an beta

 

So I've been using the beta build 7000 (32-Bit of course) for a few days now; I got it from my friend who is an MSDN member (or something like that).

The first thing I couldn't believe; the install speed. From putting the installation disc in for the first time to being on my desktop was under an hour.

The next thing I noticed was how smooth it ran. Mind you my machine is pretty modern, but I had absolutely no hitches; everything loaded near-instantly. It definitely runs way faster than my Vista 64-Bit (which runs faster than my other friends' 32-Bit XP and 32-Bit Vista configs). Furthermore, it hasn't frozen or BSOD'd yet.

Thank god the all Vista drivers are compatible with Windows 7, because only ATI so far has been kind enough to prepare Windows 7 preview drivers.

The start bar is kinda weird. I like everything about it except for the lack of text. The common tasks are useful, the group works very well, and I cant live without the window previews (since Windows Vista).

I could go on for hours about the new features, changes and improvements, but I thought I'd just touch on the first impressions.

Here's there wierd thing though. I am running 4GB of RAM, and in addition to that I have a 512MB ATI HD4850. Even though it was 32-Bit it some how recognized (and as far as I know addressed) all 4GB of RAM.

If you have any specific questions, I'd be more than willing to answer them.

-Indybird

 

I've also been testing it and been very impressed with the performance so far. I have it installed on my old machine (single core A64 3000+, 1gb ram) and it runs faster than a fresh install of vista on my much higher specced laptop (Core Duo 2.16ghz, 4gb ram), and the laptop doesn't feel that slow to me.

 

My Vista install went and died on me yesterday, so I installed Windows 7 Beta instead and I have to say, it has so far worked just as well as Vista SP1 did, all of my hardware's Vista drivers seem to function properly in Windows 7. It is very similar to Vista, but with a few nice distinguishing features, like dragging a window to the top of the screen to maximize, dragging them to the side for a comparison style look or making invisible windows by dragging the mouse to the bottom right corner.

 

I could probably manage (mark the word "manage") running Windows 95 today. You can surf the web, do you email and play games (old games). The questions isn't what you are able to manage or not. The questions is about what you like. What you truly enjoy using. And I enjoy Vista more than XP, and I enjoy Windows 7 more than Vista. Yes there are problems. But Windows 7 seems snappier and smoother than Vista. Takes some to know this OS as well. That's the good thing. Things ought to change between OS releases. Some people don't want fancy features or any changes and I can respect that. But that often doesn't resonate well with the industry. The industry needs changes to push forward. It's a business after all.

I've been running Windows 7 now for the past 3 days, played games on it and watched HD movies among other stuff I usually do without thinking that this is a BETA operating system that much.
PunkBuster kicks you off servers if you play online games protected by it because it thinks the new API functions in Windows 7 are cheats (modified OS code). EvenBalance is not likely to update PunkBuster for Windows 7 before it hits RTM. Valve's VAC protection however runs just fine on Windows 7.

 

I downloaded it overnight, and am going to install it now. It really does look like KDE 4 though . If it really is as snappy as people make out then I'm looking forward to this!