Windows 7 News

[Fincuan]

Originally Posted by Arclight

I do have another question though: I'm planning a reïnstall. Instead of putting XP back on again, win7 would be an alternative.

From your personal experience, do you have...
...

Would be nice to switch; 64-bit, DX10... wait, do I even want those?
*edit: is it possible to legally get a newer build (now 7000) from MS?

Hi

I've used the 64-bit Windows 7 beta build 7000 since January, and my experiences with it have been really good.

1) Daemon Tools was the only that didn't work, but I found a good working replacement for it(Virtual Clonedrive). Mediaplayers, video editing stuff, photoeditors etc have been working straight out of the box. Windows 7 also contains quite a lot of codecs by default, so you shouldn't need any kind of codec packs anytime soon. I'm currently running only ffdshow in addition to Windows' default codecs, and haven't yet come across a video I couldn't play.

2) None. Everything worked 100% out of the box. I'm using Vista x64 drivers where available, and Vista x86 drivers when x64 isn't available.

3) None in my opinion. Stable as hell, fast and good. I haven't seen a BSOD in months, though I did get a few just after install due to bad LAN card drivers. The only problem I can think of is that it's a beta and it'll expire, forcing you to uninstall/reinstall stuff since it won't be possible to upgrade the beta to the full version. MS has however promised that beta users can upgrade to the release candidate that should be out in a few months, and that the RC keys won't expire until well into 2010.

I'm not aware of any means to get a newer than 7000 build from MS. AFAIK all the newer ones are "leaked".