Comments on: Microsoft holding off on Windows 7 public beta

The company says it needs to add some more servers before making the code publicly available. Heavy demand on Friday was leading to site problems for Microsoft.

After years of testing MS Operating Systems, I think their policy of not doing private, selective betas first, followed by larger scale betas is a mistake. They used to select beta testers carefully, scale a release out to them, and when it met certain standards feed it out more.

I have read all the reviews and truly expected this OS to be ready for serious use (ie, not release quality, but beta... there will be some bugs quality), so I went ahead and installed it on my primary home system just to see. Not to worry (I have enough redundant backups between my HP Home Server and an image that I can be back to my pre-Win7 experience in hours).

In the first day I found two showstoppers that sent me back to the backup images. First, my iTunes library became totally unreadable. Then when I restored that iTunes library from that trusty HP Home Server iTunes told me my computer was not registered so I had to use up yet another one of those stupid iTunes activations.

On the second day, after a session in Quicken, I got a strange error when trying to backup the file that said the file could not be closed and hence the backup could not be created and hence your current file is hosed. So, restored all the Quicken files from the Home Server, restarted, opened Quicken, repeated the sequence and 100% reproducible error. Same problem.

So, back to the Home Server, back to Vista and I will do my experimenting on my old Toshiba notebook that I no longer really use, but which has almost all the same apps on it and I don't care if they get hosed because I can still can't back to where I am now on that machine as well.

My point is that 2.5 million people who may or may not know what they are doing are going to install Windows 7 and run into these inevitable glitches and come away really po'd.

Those private, select betas of people who actually understand how to test a beta without hosing their systems may look pretty good a year from now.

[Fil0403]

I would say it's not exactly Microsoft's problem if some people download, install, and use Windows 7 public beta without reading the warnings or knowing the meaning of the word "beta".

[Fil0403]

It sucks so much that everybody wants it.

Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

[rplat]

Typical Microsoft debacle. Did anyone really expect this to go smothlyl?

[technor]

I was able to download the Windows 7 Beta today from Singapore in 50 mins, the whole 2.5 GB. Using the USB drive, I am up and running now! Created a dual boot with Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7. The whole setup was a breeze, and despite my very low system power (2 Year old laptop with dual core and 1 GB RAM), windows 7 is running extremely well. There is no slowness anywhere and the first looks are that the OS is very stable, pleasing to the eye and fassst!. Let me experiment more!

[acc1444]

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.ISO

Hurry UP

direct link frm Microsoft

[dhtechs]

This link is good...downloading now

[Ilgaz]

Microsoft gets service from Akamai and Akamai has way more power than you can imagine to host things.

I think this is a PR trick and nothing else. MS would have tough time distributing updates to hundreds of MILLIONS of computers on Tuesdays. Not a beta of a unfinished OS.

CNET shouldn't waste their bandwidth for them and keep hosting freeware stuff like they always did.

[tessa1105]

I went to the Windows 7 download link about noon today CST, and I didn't have any trouble downloading the beta. Each page loaded fast with no hangups at all. Download took about 1 hr. Looks GREAT! No internet traffic to report and I also got my lic key that expires August 1st, 2009.

Beta Tester for Microsoft for 8 yrs now.
Happy in Tennessee :)

[gopher10]

Finally managed to download it. WOW. Using it for a couple of hours and I'm stunned. Everything Vista should have been. Did an upgrade from Vista on my old Acer laptop without a hitch. Get it ! Now to see if my Mac can handle it.

[GEO2003]

All of you who are complaining, I read all of your messages so I went to Microsoft.com, logged in with my Windows Live ID and began the download.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION, THE KEY WAS PRESENTED TO ME BEFORE I EVEN BEGAN THE DOWNLOAD.

The download is through the Akami Download Manager and it has open 4 connections for me which is allowing me to get the Beta at 1.53MB/sec. average, I am well over 60 percent done in less then 20 minutes.

You trolls who have problems with Vista and downloads should go back to your caves.

You simple don't know how to work with programs in a computer.

On top of the download taking place right now, I am typing this messages without any delays.

Please go and do something you know how to do.