bit-tech.net

Microsoft ends Windows 7 beta

Published on 11th February 2009 by Tim Smalley

Microsoft has closed the Windows 7 beta download period after unprecedented levels of interest.

After unprecedented levels of interest, Microsoft has called time on Windows 7 beta downloads today.

A notice on the Windows 7 beta download site now reads: "We're sorry, but [Windows 7] downloads are no longer available. If your download was interrupted, you can still finish it."

Those of you who are still downloading the beta operating system have until 5pm tomorrow to finish - and if you don't finish by then, the download will be terminated.

Despite this, the Windows 7 website is still offering beta keys for those who haven't registered their copy yet - Microsoft is understandably keen for testers to activate their copy.

Originally, Microsoft planned to only offer 2.5 million downloads before closing the beta, but after demand for a first glimpse at Microsoft's next operating system brought servers to a halt, the company extended the deadline until 12th February.

The beta has been a massive success for Microsoft and a lot of goodwill has been passed in its direction following the storm of criticism it faced in the run up to (and following) the Vista release. The software giant has said that this success has meant it'll skip straight to release candidate, but there is so far no indication as to when this is scheduled for release.

Moreover, the company only plans a single release candidate unlike the two it has released for previous versions of Windows and although Microsoft still states that general availability is likely to come early in 2010, our bets are on a late 2009 launch.

Have you tried out the beta? Share your thoughts with us over in the forums.

17 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

mclintox 11th February 2009, 12:40

Been fine for me up to now,no problems.

oasked 11th February 2009, 13:02

Yes I have and its very good.

Bring on the full release.

Singularity 11th February 2009, 13:25

It's been more than fine. Most of the time it doesn't feel like a beta at all. I've been running it as my only OS on my main rig since it came out...

DragunovHUN 11th February 2009, 14:09

I was hoping this would be a good replacement for XP. So far, playing around with the beta, it looks like it'll do the trick.

mrb_no1 11th February 2009, 14:28

i used it, and it works well, my only problem was that my creative drivers wouldnt install on it so i had no sound, and as such i couldnt then be bother to test it as a gaming rig when i had no sound. boooo

peace

fatman

asphinx 11th February 2009, 14:56

--> mbr_no1, actually creative drivers not working properly is more of Creatives' fault than Microsofts' as they have been unwilling to make drivers that work properly with Vista/7. Daniel Kawakami made alternative drivers that work better, but alas Creative did apparently not appreciate this and "pulled the plug" of this rather excellent fan based accomplishment. You can still however find them online, if you know where to look.

GoodBytes 11th February 2009, 15:25

I don't know about Windows 7... I mean until what i see now Windows 7 has nothing much over Vista 64-bit. One thing that blocks me for cashing money to purchase it is that when you maximize windows transparency is keep. I just can't stand that.
For those who know me, i had distracting stuff as well... I am very easily distracted... you remember... the guy (me) that is anti-glossy stuff unless it's out of my view site of work. If you have any bright background or changing one or animated one, you keep thinking that windows wants your attention on something. To add it's useless, ugly, makes hard to read anything that is on the transparency stage... so basically all application that take advantage of Aero by having buttons and text on the glass boarder goes at the garbage, and presents a amateurish job. If there is a registry hack or option to change the behavior down to Vista, than I am happy. But until then... it's a no no. Again, it might seams like 1 thing, but again Win7 64-bit is really Vista 64-bit with a faster boot-up and improvement on the resources "taking" (you know what I mean) and management. I can live without these things. Same for the Superbar, and other features.. I mean hey! I lived fine between Win3.1 to Vista 64-bit.

Er-El 11th February 2009, 15:29

I have a spare serial for 64 bit version if anyone wants it. Just send me a message. I was going to download it but changed my mine.

Psy-UK 11th February 2009, 17:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Er-El
I have a spare serial for 64 bit version if anyone wants it. Just send me a message. I was going to download it but changed my mine.

You do know that there are only 4 keys for 32-bit and another 4 for 64-bit? :P

The Growler 11th February 2009, 17:53

I put the beta 7 on my test rig about a month ago. The only downsides I've seen so far is compatability. Diskeeper (defrag software) doesn't work with it (any version) and the first game I installed, Call of duty World at War seemed to install ok but wouldn't run. This could well be a driver problem. Other games I've tried like Crysis Warhead worked just fine. Overall I'd have to say it's a step up from vista.

perplekks45 11th February 2009, 17:56

There's always BitTorrent to get it. Nice speeds you get on multi-thousand seeder torrents, too. ;)

By the way... is that an intellitxt advert I see there? FF3.0.6 on Vista on my girlfriend's laptop and I see it. SHAME ON YOU!!!
GET RID OF IT! N-O-W!!!

...sorry, but I had to...

Horizon 11th February 2009, 19:00

W7 x64

i have a few mainly with media player and media sharing, when content stored off primary hard drive. The library will be empty and it'll say it's searching for media in background, content stored on other hard drive (same computer) will be recognized as shared network media but even then it won't find everthing and you can't add either.

32-bit browsers crash often, or won't render and are flaky at best: opera, firefox, chrome(best to worst)

Adobe Shockwave refuses to play nice, leading to browser crashes.

Once when fiddling with media player I triggered some sort of resource black hole which brought my system to it's knees, with everything closed was getting like 10fps while moving mouse across the screen, and having windows beg me to kill non critcal services like aero. I'd like to report it but i don't know what i did, and haven't been able to trigger it a second time.

GoodBytes 11th February 2009, 20:08

Horizon you must remember that IE8 is still not official released. So it is normal that it has issues.

Mister_Tad 11th February 2009, 20:22

I'm a huge fan of it, have been using it as my main OS for a few weeks and have no reason not to carry on doing so indefinitely. Windows 7 is, as a matter of fact, win.

I'm even considering throwing it on my HTPC. There's so much fiddling to get freesat working properly in Vista Media Centre, may be worth a punt.

Anakha 12th February 2009, 00:14

I've been running it since launch day (w7 x64) with no problems whatsoever.

Chrome don't run (at all - tabs fail every time you open them). There's supposed to be a switch you can pass in to make it work, but I can't be bothered.

Firefox 3, however, seems to be okay. The occasional hiccup, but the error reporter restarts FF and everything loads just as it was before with no issues.

TMNF works AOK, which is good. Not tried much else as this is only a 40GB HDD I've got the system on, Dual-booting with Vista, so when the beta expires I can either upgrade to the next one or fall back to Vista. I'm reluctant to do that, though. Win7 is awesome, and everything that Vista was supposed to be. Can't wait for the full release.

Henk 12th February 2009, 15:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mister_Tad
I'm a huge fan of it, have been using it as my main OS for a few weeks and have no reason not to carry on doing so indefinitely. Windows 7 is, as a matter of fact, win.

Yeah, and I hope when RC1 comes it will be painless to upgrade to that.

kenco_uk 12th February 2009, 16:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psy-UK
You do know that there are only 4 keys for 32-bit and another 4 for 64-bit? :P

I refreshed the serial key screen a few times (got three for me, and more for other people) and got a total of 7 unique keys for the 64-bit download.

So ner.