Windows 7 beta releasing FREE to all on Friday!

http://lifehacker.com/5126076/windows-7-beta-available-as-free-download-on-friday

I'll be there... Now I just have to talk Ren into it. Wink

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Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 8:21 am Post subject:

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Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 10:24 am Post subject:

I looked forward to Vista, but wasn't impressed at all by it... and I get way better performance from XP.. other than better graphic capabilities.

I am hoping "7" has the speed and agility of XP, with the latest DX support... that's all I really care about. All the rest of the bloat is worthless to me. I just want a functioning OS that will get me online.. and wont have any blue screens. Did I mention game support? tsk tsk.. poor Linux... no darn game support... wake up game makers! Cool

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Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 11:28 am Post subject:

A lot of the features in Vista vs XP are small things. Things you can certainly live without. However, once you use Vista for a while, you go back to an XP machine and you are like:

"WTF! How did I ever get along without breadcrumb navigation in Explorer?"

"This old search box in XP just sucks! The new Search / Run combo box is so much better that I can't wait to get off this old piece of crap!"

"OMG! Was it ever really this stupid and hard to connect a laptop to my wireless network and share some folders?"

"Whew, I don't miss this solid, clunky interface with the Fisher Price color scheme, no popup previews of programs minimized to the taskbar, and an ALT-TAB task switcher that is just useless if you have more than two programs running."

"I don't miss this .ico format for icons. Nice to be able to use the vastly cooler and easy to create .png format now!"

"Crap, forgot I can't use a nice small .jpg file as my desktop background instead of a 4meg .bmp file without turning on Acitive Desktop and eating up tons of cpu and memory. Certainly like my Vista, where it natively supports .jpg, .png and other formats."

"Let me right click this .mp3 file and add all the ID3 metadata. Oh wait. Can't do that in XP, only Vista!"

"I want to rename the file, not change the extension! I forgot how stupid XP was in not just highlighting the file name when I hit F2"

But that's they way it has always been with Windows. I was a beta tester for Windows 3.0 while at Sprint International, and loved it. Windows 3.1 added some cool new features and I never looked back. Windows95 was a leap ahead with desktop shortcut/icons and no more "program manager". Windows98 finally freed Windows from DOS and added tons of multimedia stuff. XP was all about the eye-candy and a bunch of improvements to the GUI. Vista was eye-candy, but more importantly a rewrite of the API's under the covers to improve security and support for hardware devices. Win7 looks to be mostly some eye-candy and performance enhancements to Visa.

I could more than likely do everything I "need" to do on a computer on Windows98, but why would I want to? What's wrong with incremental improvements based on user feedback and market pressure? The hardware supports it as long as you stay reasonably current, so why not more and more eye-candy and features. Bloat? So? I'm not running on the Pentium II with 512meg of RAM anymore. This 64X2 core with 2gig of memory runs Vista like a scalded cat and if Windows 7 or Windows 8 needs more, I'll get more.

I didn't miss DOS, I don't miss XP, and I won't miss Vista. Time to move on...
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Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 12:25 pm Post subject:

Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 3:22 pm Post subject:

I liked Windows 95... actually seemed stable to me... although a reformat was in the works more often.

Basically all I do on a PC is:

- Download. Get movies, music, and pictures. Be able to convert and burn if necessary.

- Play games.. have it function well, and look perdy.

- Surf the web, read, email, pay my bills. Spam forums.. j/k.

Other than that... I can't see a reason to go forward except for DX10... and I can't hardly ever get the time like I once had to play many games.
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Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 6:51 pm Post subject:

so does this get rid of all your xp stuff , how do u get it back and such?
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Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 7:59 pm Post subject:

Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 8:13 pm Post subject:

Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 10:54 pm Post subject:

ur right i would screw up my pc. but man i am so curious Cool

i'll leave it alone
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Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 8:34 am Post subject:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/the-geek-blog/what-you-should-expect-from-the-windows-7-beta/
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Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 1:40 am Post subject:

Update:

The Win7 beta works like a champ. Not a single significant problem installing it or using the latest Vista drivers for all devices. Installed all my usual programs, utilities, games etc, with only one utility (Sandboxie, which uses a very low level system driver and just wasn't compatible) not working.

Seems as fast or faster than Vista, and I love the new features and eye-candy. Call of Duty 5 plays great on it, Ventrilo set up with not one hassle and I can't find anything to really complain about.

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Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:02 am Post subject:

Just one of the cool new features. The new "SmartBar" taskbar. Just like ObjectDock, you can "pin" programs on the taskbar and they are there even if they are not running, so you can create your own "dock" without any additional software. Running programs are on the taskbar of course, and you can tell them from the ones "pinned" there and not running by the highlighted icon they have.

But what is really neat is the new "peek" feature. Here are some pics:

You have some programs running, there they are on the taskbar

Hover over the icon to get a real-time thumbnail of the running program

Move your cursor over the thumbnail, and all programs except that one turn invisible (with an outline) so you can see your program

Click on the thumbnail and that program comes to the front

Other neat features are:

* Grab a window at the top and "shake" it, and all other programs automatically minimize, leaving you with just the active program

* Move a window to the top of the screen and it automatically maximizes. Move it down and it jumps back to the original size.

* Move a window to the left or right of the screen and it automatically resizes to fit half the screen. Move it back toward the middle and it jumps back to the original size.

* WinKey + Spacebar "peeks" at your desktop. All windows become invisible (with just a border) and you can get at your desktop icons without minimizing anything.