Windows 7 M1: Is it worth testing?

[Bigern1990]

Hey guys. Im still a little new here and can't wait to gain access to the beta/rtm release thread, but I still have a ways to go. I am happy that I finally found a forum/website with other people that love to beta test software. I started beta testing software since a very early release of Vista.

Anyhow...my friend gave me a Windows 7 M1 disc. He said that to install it I was going to have to set my bios clock back since it ended in June.

First off, are there really any significant changes from Vista that I will notice, or does alot of it have to do with the new micro-kernel and better performance.

I will probably test it out anyway, but want to know the gist ahead of time.

Would you guys recommend running it in a VM, or running it off of its own HDD?

[Luthian]

I would say that Its interesting to see some of MS' early work on Win 7 at the least. There are some differences that you will notice (for example some moderately extensive work on the start menu) but alot that you won't, at least not right off the bat.

As for VM or RM if you go with the VM you won't get any of the new tweaked aero effects but thats just about it (If you are worrying about it messing up your vista partition on your real machine, Win 7 will set up a dual boot without any issues. At least it did for me.)

Setting back your Virtual BIOS can be tricky and is a completely different process depending on which VM software you use, so it might actually be easier to use a separate partition.

If you do go with a real system, 99% of your Vista drivers should work on Windows 7 (I only had one fail myself)

Good Luck!

[betaluva]

what different about the startmenue? do you have pics? i havnt bothered with m1 because i thought it was identical to vista.

[strekship]

I looked at it a little bit but deleted the VM. I didn't notice anything new with the start menu though (didn't pay close attention to it, might have missed something).

[hounsell]

Well, in the start menu, there is a new method of pinning apps on the menu and when you search, the results take up the whole start menu, rather than just the application side.

[Tootles]

Is it a real disc? Can you scan the case and the cd label, if it is? I want to print them out so I can put it in a case.

[Rob Jansen]

I think its a self made disc from a torrent or BA or another website

[Smartie77]

windows 7 is notable faster and overall very performant (compared to vista sp1 with all reliability patches )to me on the following machine :

AMD Athlon ( no 64bit, plain old socket 462 ), 1.8 GhZ
1024 MB DDR
Radeon 9550 AGP / 128MB
Asrock SiS based Mobo, C-Media AC97,USB,LAN.

Installed as Ultimate Edition.
It gets a "Windows Experience Index" of 2.9 ( Graphics) and 3.1 ( CPU/RAM )
It uses half to three quarter of the Ram, if many ( 7-9 ) windows and built-in apps open
It feels snappy and I haven't experienced a single freeze or "not responding" ( which happens sometimes in vista sp1 ).

I feel sorry that this has a timebomb , otherwise I would instantly use it as a main OS. It's the better Vista for me. I also like that the sidebar is gone, and the way the gadgets are now handled plus the new controls of WMp11.

Talking like this makes me install it now once more

[Tootles]

I can't get it to activate. At all.

[XX55XX]

I can't get it to activate. At all.

It's not worth activating anyways. The beta does give you a 30-day grace period, so that should be more than enough time to check it out. I personally uninstalled this beta only after three days, because there wasn't too much to see.

[Tootles]

Hmm...

Roll on M2, then .

[Resplendent]

I'd agree it did feel faster. Considering I had it running on a virtual PC with only 512 RAM, it felt at least as fast as Vista on 3GB, if not faster. Assuming it's not a fluke, that's pretty amazing to me, so hopefully if this keeps up through the dev cycle, 7 could blow Vista away on the performance end.

[IainK]

All i can say is about time!

Vista SP1 feels like beta 1 of whistler to me