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Windows 7 Beta 1 Coming January 2009?

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Thanks to a heads up from Keith Combs, we are learning that Windows 7 Beta 1 DVDs will be made available in mid January 2009, and this is confirmed through MSDNDevCon.com, who is saying they will be distributing Windows 7 Beta 1 DVDs for attendees of their conferences in December and January.

I’m with Ed Bott on this one – the dates make sense, but I bet Microsoft unveils Windows 7 Beta 1 at CES during Steve Ballmer’s pre-CES Keynote, then begins rolling it out to the public to coincide with that January 13th date. From the looks of things, it won’t be too much longer before we are all testing Windows 7.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. GoodThings2Life

    12/03/2008 at 5:07 am

    I know I’m looking forward to it… a lot of promise being shown in W7 compared to what I’ve experienced in Vista.

    Oh, and is it just me or are we back to the normal comment-posting form? (Hooray! :))

  2. Medic

    12/03/2008 at 7:02 am

    Great news! I hope the lucky testers of the DVD will provide positive news on the stability, reliability and performance issues (among others memory footprints).

    Secondly I hope impprovements are seen in the usability of the TIP and MIP. Will they be integrated? Will the recognition be improved? Will there be news of better integration with hopefully beter inking in a new onenote and a tablet and ink friendely Outlook?

  3. Rob Bushway

    12/03/2008 at 7:54 am

    yes, we are back on the wordpress commenting system. There were just too many lagging issues with Intense Debate and I grew tired of waiting for them to fix it. We’ll stay on this system until Intense Debates fleshes itself out a bit more.

    @medic – unfortunately, I have no clue. we will have to wait and see, won’t we.

  4. Chris

    12/03/2008 at 8:56 am

    It is good to see Windows 7 moving forward. Reduced footprint and greater reliability may be what it takes to get broad acceptance in the business community, which apparently is basically skipping Vista.

    I do not pretend to know what is changed â€Ŕunder the hood”, but much of what I am hearing sounds like it should be included in a Vista service pack, rather than a new release. It seems to me that Windows 7 is incorporating many Vista fixes. I hope, but do not expect, the upgrade price is reasonable and there is special pricing for current Vista users. So far it is hard to see why much of Windows 7 Beta 1 is not Vista SP2 Release candidate 1.

    An example is the larger login keyboard; since Vista is available and supported on small screen and touch screen devices, an easy functional way to log in is a necessary fix, not a revolutionary â€Ŕmust have” reason purchase an upgrade.

    Reduced footprint and increased reliability, to a very large extent, are reasonable service pack improvements to counteract the perception of Vista as a bloated, unreliable operating system. Whether these footprint/reliability improvements are maintained during the development cycle remains to be seen. At this point, we hear that Windows 7 Pre-Beta testers have good results â€Ŕout of the box” with older underpowered (XP Capable) systems. These are the same systems that performed poorly, at best, even after hours of tweaking Vista. This seems like a fix, not an upgrade.

    On separate note, if MS intends to see tablet computing move forward, tablet and TIP related improvements should and need to be released to current users. Typical MS Tablet PC marketing would be â€ŔLook at Windows 7! Touch and pen will be great when it is released in 2009 (3rd or 4th quarter? OK maybe 5th or 6th quarter.) But please buy now, so we can sell you an upgrade. We promise everything will work great! … ”…Been There, Done That! It is time for MS make good on their promises.

  5. Zargoth

    12/03/2008 at 11:10 am

    well it looks like vista turned out to be windows 95 after all. a big change, somewhat better, but lacking finish. followed up by windows 7 (windows 98). hopefully this will hold true, win 98 has been regarded as one of the best the made (probably win 98 se). either way, i need to get a beta asap for my m700

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