Free download runs till 22/1 2009, so better go get it!
It will stop working 1/8 2009

Today I took the bold (and maybe foolish) step to wipe out my XP install. Only running Windows 7 beta 64bit now. I can't see myself looking back for a while.

Also check out the free beta for Kaspersky antivirus/firewall etc that works very well with Windows 7 beta.Link

cheers Porphy

Heh

I don't know it it's wise to advertise it here, but I did it in the opposite order and installed Windows 7 64 bit on the partition where XP had been :lol:

No complaints so far, actually even more praise: At first I wasn't able to get my wireless UBS-dongle to work with its Vista drivers no matter what, so I had to do with a wire for a while. Not for long. Today I finally checked Windows Update, and was surprised when they had a driver for my wireless card. Downloaded the driver and voila, wireless works :up:

:hmm:Im gonna have to get the higher power *parents* to agree with me on this. (ought a reformat vista anyway):hmm:

hmmmm, now how to back up vistas files. *just incase my parents say ok.

Thanks for the direct link - but where do I get a key for the bugger?

The link below describes the method I used to get a key with Firefox browser. It might sound a bit complicated at first but it beats hitting refresh in front of your computer for an hour or a lot more... :roll:

Link

cheers porphy

Finally got the nerve together to make an image of my XP install, shrink the partition XP was in and create a new partition for Windows 7. Got it installed and everything worked great until the first time I booted without the Windows 7 DVD in the drive. Booted right up to XP, no multi-boot option. Modified my boot.ini to point to the Windows 7 partition as a second option, won't boot. Put the Windows 7 disk back in the drive and, voila, boots into 7. Kind of a wonky way to do it for now, but it's just for testing anyway.

Gotta say, I'm pretty happy with it so far, too. Never tried Vista, so I'll find out in the next few days how much of my software will be a problem. So far, no worries, but haven't tried to install CS3 or any games yet either.

Direct X 11 in Windows 7
 

Ran the Direct X Diagnose tool in Windows 7 and to my surprise it came back saying that it uses Direct X 11, so now we are going to have to go out and buy new graphics cards down the track when developers start to use the new Direct X 11 to make there games.

Steve

Yeah noticed that DX11 thingy too, but so far I've had zero problems with Vista 64bit graphics drivers(made for DX10). Thanks to Ati for dropping support for my card(x1950 Pro) from their Windows 7 drivers :up:

Also Ati+OpenGL+64bit Win 7 = No go. Ati stated that it just isn't supported. Luckily DirectX works great.

Just installed the 64-bit version and it's running great (Except that I can't seem to get my damn RAID to work)

Gonne try to run it for a while and see how it goes

Ooooohhh. Windows7 (or atleast as of now) dosent support open gl. that's a downer.

I had some problems with my raid as well. No problems setting it up, but when formatting to NTFS it was reported as "write protected" and it wouldn't complete the process. Installing my motherboard Real Tek drivers for network somehow fixed that. Probably because my raid is hooked up on my e-Sata connector, but I still really can't figure out why it was reported as write protected. Anyway, it works now.:yep:

cheers Porphy

Personally, I won't even consider 7 for a year, maybe two. It's BETA, it's becomes inoperative in August, and considering MicroSoft's track record, it will have the usual bugs, incompatibilites and exploitable holes as any of their OSs have in the past.

Add to that manufacturers will have to build "Windows 7" drivers, blah, blah, blah... and you've got what, about a year after the official release before it's truly useful?

For those who didn't care for Vista, I would add that neither did I for the first couple of years after release. That being said, I've got Vista Home Basic running "perfectly" and I do mean PERFECTLY on both a laptop and my new game PC. No issues, no hangups, no problems. OpenGL smokes, DirectX runs great and all my programs from my XP days work fine...

The secret to Vista is simple, you can configure it to look and act like XP AND if you turn off the stupid UAC security junk along with Aero the Windows Defender crap, it works very well.

Cheers.

I read today that any computer purchased on or after July 1st can get a free download of Windows 7. So, I guess the target date to release is July. Then we sit and wait for SP1:down:

Okay, a quick BIOS fix got my RAID working, now I have no complaints except the OpenGL thing