Windows 7 Beta anyone??

[Elusiv1]

Anyone try the Windows 7 beta yet?? I was thinking of doing a dual boot so i can check it out.


Moved to Operating Systems.

AnandTech Moderator
mechBgon

 

[Elusiv1]

Wrong forum, sorry about that..

 

[Modular]

I'm downloading it now to try it out. Have you installed it and run it? Anyone else care to give any feedback?

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: Modular
I'm downloading it now to try it out. Have you installed it and run it? Anyone else care to give any feedback?

I've been running it for a few days now without any problems at all and I definitely think it's an improvement over Vista.

 

[Tarrant64]

I can tell you performance wise it runs pretty smooth on a PIII with 768mb of RAM. Haven't had a high-end system yet to install it on. There are some 3rd party apps that aren't working right now, however not too big of a deal.

Runs smooth and the UAC isn't as intrusive as it was on Vista.

 

[imported_GunHo]

I installed Windows 7 beta 64 bit 3 days ago and I'm finding myself not booting back into xp pro. So far everything works well,Games run great (Left 4 Dead, CoD4, BF2,BF2142) and I'm not having any problems with Internet Explorer 8. I didn't need any sata drivers during install( I loved that) all hardware was working at bootup. This was the easiest install of an OS for me. I'm still adding programs one by one but all seems good.... I'll buy this OS when i comes out.

 

[Kdiver58]

Biggest problem Ihave with it is that it won't work with my ASUS A7N8X motherboard network card and Nvidia has no plans to provide MF2 drivers for Windows 7. It runs fine on my AMD athlon XP2500+ . I think it's a step up from Vista .. But I can't surf with it so the Jurys out on that one ..

 

[Ketchup]

I can Echo what GunHo said, Easiest OS install for me to date, and much quicker than Vista install, espically without determining your performance index. I was surprised to see that setup even automatically installed my networked HP printer. UAC is so much less bothersome, I haven't even disabled it. I wasn't sure I would like the taskbar when others were talking about it, but I think it's great and it actually gives the useful information I want, instead of the little picture that Vista gives which looks nice but is not clear enough to be useful. I threw in 2 extra gigs of RAM so I could try out 64-bit, so I can't comment on how the great performance I am seeing would translate into 32-bit. The nVidia drivers are very good, (glad they learned their lesson from Vista) and everything on the desktop is exceptionally clear when compared to XP. I put an extra drive in my system for Windows 7 and the bootloader makes it easy to switch between XP and 7. So far the only thing I have installed is AVG 8, which works fine. I tried Avast, and it installed correctly, but when I rebooted the AV engine cound not be started.

I have Vista on my laptop (came with it) but did not upgrade my desktop from XP. Because 7 runs so well, looks great, and has a nice feature upgrade from XP, I plan on buying it when the full version is released. It would be a great upgrade from XP, but I will leave Vista on the laptop. I may be in the minority, but I have had very few and minor quibbles with Vista. I just don't see any reason to buy Vista for the desktop when 7 is right around the corner and seems to be a better OS.

 

[Modelworks]

Windows 7 is pretty stable for most people. The final should be out before the fall, that is how close to final it is. The RC is expected around april .

The one thing to be careful about is drivers. Especially the video drivers included with 7 unless you have a true windows 7 version from the card maker. Some people are crashing 7 and blaming it when using hacked together vista drivers.

For AV there are windows 7 versions from Kaspersky, AVG, Norton, that you can try.

 

[ultimatebob]

I found it to be pretty stable, except for getting AVG Free edition to work with it.

The security paranoia is still annoying, though. I got prompted with a "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO OPEN THIS, EXECUTABLE FILES ARE DANGEROUS!" warning no less than three times when downloading and installing a copy of Firefox. Twice in IE, and once from Windows UAC.

 

[imported_GunHo]

ultimatebob, Strange I'm using AVG free too and it installed without a hitch. I'm running (sort of) Firefox 3 ... with IE8 (thought I'd try out Explorer for awhile since I've been using FF since it's beta) So far the only hiccup I've had is it wont recognize my 19" ws monitor and has it listed as generic. I'm going to install my old trusty HP laserjet IIp and see if Win 7 will use it or belch fire and flames

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: GunHo
ultimatebob, Strange I'm using AVG free too and it installed without a hitch. I'm running (sort of) Firefox 3 ... with IE8 (thought I'd try out Explorer for awhile since I've been using FF since it's beta) So far the only hiccup I've had is it wont recognize my 19" ws monitor and has it listed as generic. I'm going to install my old trusty HP laserjet IIp and see if Win 7 will use it or belch fire and flames

AVG works now, but getting it to update sometimes seems to flake out.

 

[roguerower]

for some reason I can't dl it. It gets to the spinning green dots but nothing happens. Any ideas on how to fix that?

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Kdiver58
Biggest problem Ihave with it is that it won't work with my ASUS A7N8X motherboard network card and Nvidia has no plans to provide MF2 drivers for Windows 7. It runs fine on my AMD athlon XP2500+ . I think it's a step up from Vista .. But I can't surf with it so the Jurys out on that one ..

Have you tried Vista drivers? So far, all the Vista drivers I've tried work - SB X-Fi (Win 7 x64) and Synaptics trackpad (Win 7 x86).

 

[SuperSix]

I like it - a lot. For shits and giggles, I installed it on my laptop - about 3 years old, PentiumM 1.5GHz (Specs in sig)

I used Gparted to shrink my XP parttion, left 10GB for the Win7 install. I had to use the 32 bit version, my processor doesn't support 65bit.

Initial install - Some drivers didn't install. Sound, WiFi, and some others. I rebooted back to XP, downloaded a VIsta driver for the WiFi card, rebooted into Win 7, it installed fine. Then I ran Windows Update, and it found all of the missing drivers.

I am shocked at the speed - it's as fast if not faster than the XP home I have installed, and overall - I think Win 7 is going to be a great OS.

 

[flexy]

there are only "minor" issues, far lass then i had with any new other OS.

Aside from "cosmetic" issues and errors (MMC sometimes crashing etc...) overall it seems much more seasoned compared to early Vista releases.
Despite being a beta it IS actually at least as "robust" as Vista and have very few (if any) issues w/ drivers or whatever.