Microsoft holding off on Windows 7 public beta
Microsoft has postponed, at least for a short time, making the beta of Windows 7 publicly available.
The move comes as Microsoft has struggled to keep its Windows 7 Web site up on Friday.
"Due to very heavy traffic we're seeing as a result of interest in the Windows 7 Beta, we are adding some additional infrastructure support to the Microsoft.com properties before we post the public beta," Microsoft said in a blog posting, which was itself hard to get to as of 1:20 p.m. PST. "We want to ensure customers have the best possible experience when downloading the beta, and I'll be posting here again soon once the beta goes live. Stay tuned! We are excited that you are excited!"
Meanwhile, the company appears to have also pulled the code off a direct link that some were using to get the software on Friday.
The company has said it is aiming for several million testers of the beta version, the availability of which was announced Wednesday night by Steve Ballmer in his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show. Microsoft has been aiming to have the final version ready to be on PCs for this year's holiday shopping season, but Windows boss Bill Veghte said it is still too soon to say whether the company will make that time frame. Officially, Microsoft has promised that it will be out before the three-year anniversary of Vista's January 2007 mainstream launch.
Update, 1:55 p.m. PST: Tom Warren at Neowin.net says the direct link that it posted earlier Friday is still working.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
And these are suppose to be the brightest minds in the business???
After 20 years of daily frustration with PC's and Microsoft self destructing products, I went to the other side and purchased my first Mac!
It is a truly amazing, almost FOOL-PROOF O/S. even IF??? it would fail, a simple force-quit of just the open application and with-in a few seconds(not days or weeks) the system is FULLY operational again!
Bottom Line???--------Thanks Microsoft!!! for finally allowing me to SEE-THE-LIGHT!! My I-Mac----Rocks and Rolls------with-out failure or frustration!! And I truly sleep well now-----Nightly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Teo
Failure? Hardly.
I think someone is a tad jealous that Windows 7 is getting more attention than your precious little MacWorld where nothing of interested was unveiled. MacWorld was the real disappointment of the week.
Not being able to keep up with the amount of traffic with people wanting to get the Win7 beta does not seem like failure or disappointment. Seems to be the complete opposite!
Your iCrap may have rocked in rolled. My MBP just crapped and ****ed. Biggest pile of crap I've ever owned. OS X are for tards who don't know how to run an OS. Pure and simple. Only idiots get infected with a virus. Only tards can't figure out how to install or uninstall an app. Windows is Darwinism in action: They weed out the idiots and force them over to Apple. Who gives you everything on a plate and slaps your hand with a ruler if you dare to ask for something that they don't provide you out of the box. Apple is such a cookie cutter design for an OS that it's painful for those who like tweaking their system the way THEY want it. I lost count of the different ways I can configure Windows Explorer. Finder? HA. Its either Apple's way or get lost.
(dunno about the rest of ye, but a quick peek through my comment history shows that I clearly state "good riddance" to Macworld... go figure the MSFT cheerleading crowd would be too ignorant to at least learn something)
You better buy a 2nd Mac (preferably a Macbook) because when your Mac fails and you have to bring it in for service, you will be without a Mac until it's fixed (it happens to allot of folks).
As long as you have purchased Applecare, you should be fine.
But when it happened to me and I was without my Mac for nearly a week, I did some research and purchased a Macbook shortly after getting my Mac back.
You see, Macs do fail -- but don't worry about it, you'll find out.
"@Dan: the bottleneck is at the cd key. How hard is it to distribute 2.5 million copies of a >1k file? "
Ah, I wish you would tell Microsoft that then since the problem they are *actually* experiencing is getting the content replciated to enough servers to support the demand. The CD key... isn't even part of this. That's easy to get. Getting the actual installation files-THAT is the part taking time.
Here is an area where I do have personal real life experience on the support side of the issue. I'm - 'in the know' as it said. You don't have to believe me, you can make stuff up, or you can just dance a little jig if you wish. :)
If people look at your comment history as you suggest they do, then they would clearly see you have a very biased and negative view on any and all things Microsoft, taking every opportunity to assault the company in any way possible regardless of the actual topic. That is your comment history. You even did it right here in this thread.
It's a new year. Start fresh. :)
At least they are not releasing it for people to download at 56K speeds.
Cmon Get it together.
Or are you just preparing the public for another Vista Fiasco ?
Be patient.
Microsoft Windows?
Yeah see, the difference Windows has about 50 MILLION TIMES as many users as "UbuntU". What does that mean anyway? Sounds like baby's first words.
Also, Ubuntu has an alternate means of download (BitTorrent).
MSFT is OTOH stuck with one site / domain and IIS, no P2P, and world+dog has to go through a big-arsed bottleneck just to distribute their license keys.
You tell me who has the smarter distribution model... :)
You do know how Bittorrent works, yes? You get the exact same file, just that you get pieces of it from other folks who happen to have those pieces. As more folks get more pieces, the distribution is spread out more evenly, and bandwidth pressure on the source gets smaller and smaller. Folks who play World of Warcraft already use this technology to get their game patches downloaded.
Unless you click the wrong torrent link to begin with (like, say, you click one on a site not hosted by MSFT), it would be physically impossible for you to get a trojaned copy. Why? because if you got bad pieces, they're rejected by the checksum check, and your client seeks out the correct one. Since someone can only give you a piece of that file and not the whole thing, there's no way to inject something nasty into it, because the resulting file would end up corrupt.
The downsides so far are some compatibility issues with programs, IE logmein.com doesnt support IE8, but i downloaded mozilla and worked around that, VNC does not support it either but there is a java work around to that.
No issues installing hardware drivers. Nvidia already has a SLI driver available on the windows update site for my 2 7600's! As for the rest, anything that worked in vista worked in windows7.
The new way it tabs everything at the bottom is slick. I like it a lot. Hard to explain on here but no more thousands of tabs to go through at the bottom of the screen when you got 100 windows open.
Any problems I have had I have found a work around for it.
Remember this is a BETA initial release! It already stacks up better than VISTA did on its gold day! Im highly impressed.
If you install it as your main OS remember this is a BETA and not everything is tested out, I recommend keeping a Virtual PC of winxp incase you cant do everything you want.
The windows background changer is a nice touch too. I was wondering when they were going to come out with something like that.
The CD key requirement is tiny and is not involved in this issue. It's the sheer demand from the public to download the installation media and has nothing to do with the CD keys.
Trust me on this one. I know far more than you do on it and have to deal with the back end operations for this. It's my day job.
...so explain why the site chokes at that stage?
http://harryjerry.com/windows-7/beta-download-guide/
It isn't rocket science to code a gate to only allow 2.5m successful key requests, and then lock the site to everyone else saying that things are closed for the day (then maybe open it later when you generate more keys). That would limit the whole shebang to 2.5 million (once you get past the gate, you redirect to somewhere else and clear the path for whoever comes in after you).
Considering that Firefox 3.0 by comparison managed 17m initial download requests in a 24-hour period without the massive resources at MSFT's disposal, but with only a minor initial glitch (a problem with Akamai IIRC) I'd say that MSFT screwed the pooch on this one.
/P
The CD keys are t he *EASY* part and unrelated to the issues of massive demand for this product download.
I think it would be easier to get non-legal software in the future.
Your an idiot and it shows. You try and say that ubuntu is obscure but you don't have the intellect to actually do a simple google search?
A Zulu word, literally meaning ?humanness.? Ubuntu is a social and spiritual philosophy serving as a framework for African society. ...
If microsoft had a clue they would have seeded this beta with a torrent. Just like you the company is clueless.
"Windows 7 Beta 64-bit Product Key
You may use the following product key to activate your evaluation copy of Windows 7 Beta 64-bit.
Product key: <removed>
Please print this page for your records.
Downloading the Windows 7 Beta could take a few hours. The exact time will depend on your provider, bandwidth and traffic. The good news is that once you start the download, you won?t have to answer any more questions ? you can walk away while it finishes. If it gets interrupted, it?ll restart where it left off. See this FAQ for details."
If you're already logged in with your Windows Live ID and managed to enter your details earlier, you can get your keys from either:
(64-bit) https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/productkeys/win7-64/enus/default.aspx
or
(32-bit) https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/productkeys/win7-32/enus/default.aspx
The keys are... well, working the door to the download. They unlock access to the rest of the file server- kind of like .... a key. :)
- by spectator1 January 9, 2009 5:16 PM PST
- Microsoft is probably still fixing driver that the OEMs did not certify years ago.I am a season IT Support professional I did not have any problems with Vista or Windows 7. Because I understood the challenges for most scenarios, like the OEMs not digitally certifying the drivers for Vista. Right now everyone is talking about Google has this browser, Apple has that browser etc. Microsoft had a new browser twenty years ago maybe more than that and it keeps getting better. Some of the companies and corporation need to stop being frugal and hire some IT support professional and stop expecting Microsoft to answer their questions about things other Windows.
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