Windows 7 forum: Windows 7 beta testers, how do you like it and why?

I was viewing an article directing me to the new Windows 7 Beta version for downloading, But what kept me from jumping full speed ahead was the warning that it would be fesable to download this beta version onto another computer in the event something should go astray, and it recommended to do a full backup. I have more than enough memory and drive space to do this and with dual processors on board, I feel I can handle the demand, But I live for my internet and another downloader said he / she lost that function in the beta download. I currently have Vista home basis and I am 80% happy with it's performance, even though I " must " run a smart defragmentation program in the background an set my Windows care pro program to automatically clean and optimize constantly, and I have registry cure as a back up. You would be astonished the file /application and missing registry keys that are being alligned and optimized within a 24 hour period. Furthermore, I do not want to lose everything in the process of expierimenting with Windows 7 at the expense of grasping at new features and not being able to get back to a functional Vista in the event of a crash of the Beta version. I love to tweek and pital around with new technology, and I am an advance computer user, I just want reassurance that if I jump full speed ahead with this Beta version, will I be able to restore my Vista and should I download within my main drive or try a partician. Vista was very unstable when I purchased it and now I have reasonable control over it's performance. Feel free to have anyone with technical expertise reply to me, John at jhaskins75@comcast.net

Why not take your HDD out and pop in a new one for Windows 7 trial. They sell very cheap now. Thats what i'm doing on my laptop. I have video driver issues so far with 7 and when I want to play my game I just pop the Vista HDD in and go. and there is NO chance of messing it up playing with 7 as it is physically not connected when I'm working wih 7

I have a Dell Inspiron 1720 to which I run Vista. When I downloaded W7 I put it onto my D drive with no problems at all. If you dpo not have a secondary drive you will have to partition it first. If you have an existing one you are set. any info that may be on the D drive will be saved as Windows.Old. Then if you wish to revert back to the old contents on D drive one just reverts back to Vista. Hope this helps Guardian Angel

I have used this beta for some time now. I personally find it to be alot more stable than Vista. I must add that i had now issues with my Vista Ultimate. It worked like a dream for me. Anyways everything that i used in Vista i am using in Windows7. Since this is a beta for testing, i decided to test on all levels i now how. While i may not be as verse as some you guys, i know enough to probably save myself some mistakes. With that said i decided to upgrade through vista instead of doing a clean install (did a backup first ofcoarse). Since the final product will provide this option i thought why not? After all we are testers aren't we? The process od upgrading is painfully slow i must note. Approximately 2hrs!!! Insane. But once it was finished and i rebooted, i flowed like water. I honestly had only one problem so far, even that i find is very minor. My mouse pointer jumped to other position on the screen sporadically every now and again..but straighened that out. I currently have Windows 7 dual booted with Win XP Pro. Everything worked and continue to work fine for me. Less comsumption of resources. Sweet! I am running this beta flawless on a system with Sempron 3400+(1.8GHz) 1 gig ram, XFX nvidia 9800gt(WMMD win7 beta drivers) 250 gig HDD. And no problems so far. Even my games run alot better than on vista. This is a great beta and i am excited for the final product. I think MS is on the right track with this one.

The GUI so far seems to be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. All the moving around of tasks controls in the GUI for what appears to be no good reason. I don't like the fact that Microsoft seems to be shifting to a new model; Windows as a service. I have been taking Ubuntu Linux for a test drive and the more I use it the more I like it, and the less I like Windows (Vista or 7).

I like new taskbar, much easier to see icons for us oldies.
Some are complaining about not having a sidebar, me, I prefer it this way as I can place the items I want see regularly where I want, without having to move what Im doing out of the way.
The system is less intrusive and a pleasure to use.
Installation was a breeze, it only took 25 minutes from boot to use.
Everything that was connected was working from word go. The only correction required (though working) was my pci SATA controller card needed the driver installed, it had a yellow sticker attached.
When you want to check something simple like hardware devices, you no longer need to go nuts giving permissions.
I liked Vista, never had a problem with it, but I like W7 even more. I will be upgrading.

what are the specs for the machine ie cpu etc?

here's my config:

AMD AthloneXP running at 1.7g
MB ?? (dont know - machine was salvage - haven't checked - nothing on MB)
768mb mem DDR1 (Win 7 tells me there's 1.0 gig)
40gb hdd ide
DVD/CD burner combo
CD Rom (Win7 recognised both by brand name)
OnBoard sound (VIA)
ATI Radeon 9000 + TV-out and DVI graphics card (not recognised by Win7)
Intel Pro 10/100 NIC
WIN7 32bit

on home network of 4 machines connected through 10/100 hub and then through 2wire adsl modem to the internet.

Installation (clean install) was flawless and was all done in about one half hour if that.

You're right Win7 is pretty fast even on my old equipment.

Problems:

occasional bsod - goes into self-repair mode and then tells me its found new hardware (non-existing cd rom)

No 3D hardware accelleration (dont really need it - not a games machine)

I realise WIN 7 is only a test beta but, come on, in XP we had a preview of updates to be installed and the choice of installing or not installing any particular up-dates. THAT'S MISSING IN WIN 7. I noticed that tonight's updates were all updates for Office 2007 - guess what - I dont have office 2007 installed - so now now i've got crap taking up space on my hard drive.

Where's the button bar in windows explorer?

IE8 frequently refuses to shut down

Hate the Windows Explorer layout

Other Software running on machine:

MS Visual Studio Express Editions (all) plus MSDN Library Express
Windows Live mail and messenger
Flashget (downloads slower on this machine than on my XP machines)
Kapersky Antivirus and firewall
DirectX 9.0c

All in all Win 7 runs fairly fast on my machine - will I buy it when it is finally released? Probably not. It will depend on price and whether or not I can afford to build a new computer to accommodate Win 7 or if someone writes some drivers for the non-supported graphics cards.

(ps: they must be a bunch of sourpusses at MS - sheesh, they taken out the cheat in Freecell - aw come on fellows!)

I really haven't been able to get it installed properly. I thought my DVD was bad but I can install it to Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 so the DVD must be good. It looks interesting.

I tried to install to an external SATA hard drive (Vista upgrade mode first and then clean install mode the second time) and it gets all the way to "Completing Installation..." and apparently hangs up about two-thirds of the way through. I let it sit there an hour until my cursor hangs and there is no activity showing on my HD indicator. Then I give up and roll back the install.

I upgraded from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Beta. Figured I would lose software and hardware. I lost absolutely nothing. Everything worked. Totally opposite from when I upgraded to Vista.

Some of the highlights:
- Control Panel is easier to work with. No more 3 or 4 clicks to get where you want. It is all right there after you click Control Panel
- CPU temperature is about 3 to 4 degrees cooler
- Taskbar displays programs with just an icon and easier to preview what is open in each program
- Network and wireless setup is easier

Great graphics, cool gadgets, Installed in jig time....BUT.The install didn't give me the option of setting up my network. Had a devil of a time trying to find where to change the 'workgroup'. I installed on a gigabyte k8nnxp m/b. No drivers for the gigabit ethernet on board, no drivers for the RAID controller, no drivers, unknown device. Tried running the setup for these from the m/b CD....Setup crashed each time.
I concur with control panel settings...it's all there. I don't like windows explorer, though, I find it really cumbersome. Much the same as Vista. What's operating so far is really fast. So the upshot of it all..Still working on it. Oh yes, one other thing, whenever I tried to send feedback, I couldn't get to the web site, and it always came up with the standard window, nothing tied to the errors that I had gotten, so that I had to retype the errors/codes manually.

I decided to install win7 on my laptop which is a Hp Presario C500, 1.8GHz, with 512 Ram, thinking the OS wouldn't even run on it. Vista ran really slow on it so I used xp. Windows 7 installed quickly and no additional drivers were needed. (Never had that happen before!) IE8 is very fast. Installed some apps, games, firewall, and anti-virus from my xp desktop with no issues either.
Very impressive!

I really didn't have enough time to test all the features of Win 7. But, for a user like me, advanced home and IT consulting work, it feels good. I never really adjusted to Vista. I loaded 7 in MIcrosoft Virtual PC and everything worked right the first time. I just found the GUI to be very natural for me.

On the other hand, would I switch from XP? No. I don't see 7 doing anything that I need that would incentivate me to take the risk of an upgrade. I can be happy with XP for a long time.

running much faster than Vista on my lenovo 3000 C200 (1.73MHz Celeron M430,1GB DDR2 ram; i945GM video - which does allow Aero).
although it takes a bit of getting used to, the new task bar is awesome. being able to pin to it (and there is a hack for those who want to add quickstart - but the new bar has that beat). It can be placed on any edge (not new) and it works like it was supposed to be there (which is new, it usually ended up looking and acting weird on the sides).
of course there are a few nits to pick. my Canon MP160 printer can't be recognized, but a really old HP printer (PSC1200) on the network can be. this is a driver issue and should have been working fine...still trouble shooting it. part of the problem is the way that W7 adds USB printers (auto upon connection - or power on, I suppose). Ah, the joys of beta testing.
I think that Morro should have been released or at least a 'trial' of OneCare - though that isn't one of the 'approved for W7' antivirus solutions (AVG, Kaspersky and Norton 360 are). You would need to buy one if you didn't already have a license.
AVG worked fine for a couple of days, then started crashing Windows after it updated yesterday. I then installed 360 v3Beta (a 30 day trial? for a beta AV on a beta OS - they should be giving it away until August...like W7).
I will probably go back to winclam after 360 as I have no need to beta test antivirus while I beta test an OS.

Overall...as much better than Vista as XP was better than W3.1. If you can, skip Vista and go straight to W7; you won't regret it.

Having downloaded Windows 7 and installed it on my D drive a week ago my first impressions was a clean but similar boot screen to Vista. For those thinking on Windows 7 be patient. At the present time there is not really too much to get excited about.

I must admit there does not seem to be as many conflicts with drivers etc. as there was when I tested Vista before its official release. This was a big draw back for Vista Beta Testers. In this respect it is good to see MS has addressed this problem before Beta testing 7.