Windows 7 Beta

By now, who wouldn't have heard or read about the upcoming Windows 7 from Microsoft? That is unless you have been living under a rock or far away from IT related news, so I don't blame you(or busy with real life).

Earlier today, while visiting Engadget, I stumble upon an interesting article. It looks like Microsoft decided to take off the 2.5 million downloads for the Windows 7 Beta up until January 24th. At the same time, I realized, it was open to everyone to download at that point.

Then again, I thought, "It will expire on the 1st of August 2009...". "...ah, screw it, let's just try it out.".

And then, I just create a 30GB primary NFTS partition on my older computer(with a partition manager) and install the ISO of the Windows 7 Beta(after a 1 day download wait... my Internet is not so fast...). You can get it too, just scroll down to one of the comments in the Engadget article I pasted earlier and you can download it(don't forget to write down the keys as they are needed or else you'll will end up with a 30 day Windows 7).

Okay, now to the main point of this blog post.

Once I have burned the ISO image onto a DVD-R disc at X4 speed(don't burn it too fast or else it won't work), I pop the disc into the following computer;

CPU > AMD Sempron 2500+ @ 1.4GHz

Motherboard > Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M

RAM > Kingston KVR400 1GB DDR

Hard Disk Drive > Western Digital 160GB + Maxtor 160GB

Optical Disk Drive > BenQ DVD+/-RW

Graphics Card > GeCube ATI Radeon 9550SE 128MB DDR

Well, that's the gist of the comp, it's about 4 years old by now since I bought it early 2005. Though, the RAM and the Graphics Card are newer though.

Anyways, why did I list out the computer's specs? This is so that those who want to try out this beta can dish out their old computers and give it a whirl and have a chance to run it a bit without using their main computers/newer computers. Though, I advise you to have a decent graphics card first(no need to be so fast, just something to enable Aero). Other requirements, see this page.

Okay... at first, I thought the installation was going nowhere, but after a few minutes(not so long), the installation window opened. I had to pick the language, the country and keyboard setting. Simple to be done by anyone.

Next, if I remember correctly, it will ask for how you want to install it, normal or custom. I picked custom since I'm going to run this OS along together with my XP and Vista dual boot OS config, which will lead to a Triple Boot system. All in all, the installation takes roughly 30 minutes. Much faster than when it took me to install Vista before. Very nice.

After it's done installing, I was asked to put in a username, password and so on. I just followed the on screen instructions which are easy to understand. Okay, so after I get a chance to login, I was introduced with the following screen;

The usual, you are prompted to get an anti-virus software. So I clicked the "Check Online" to see what will happen...


They gave three options, AVG, Norton or Kapersky. At first I wanted AVG, buy they linked to the pay version. I decided to check out Kapersky instead.


What's this? A beta version just for Windows 7 Beta? A must try for a curious person like me. And so I downloaded this instead. It gives a beta key which expires at 15th of April 2009(but that's still ways away).

Other than that, they also changed Paint.

Now it looks like Microsoft Word 2007, though not that much different than the previous Paint...

Besides that, they also changed the taskbar to show the icons of the programs instead of the name of the program next to a small icon. This makes the taskbar less cluttered and seemingly easier to use. If you open multiple windows for a program, it will not take up more space but will be added to the icon of already opened program and stacks up. You can highlight the icons for the thumbnails of all the open windows which corresponds to the program and picked your preferred window to open.(Sorry no picture for this as I forgot to screenshot a good one.)

More importantly, after a few essentials are installed and some desktop links put up for ease of access, this is how the default desktop looks like;


Looks quite nice, eh?

Also, the start bar... even though I made it a bit taller now.

Looks exactly like Vista with a bit of change(BTW, I changed the theme).

The last thing for me to say for now...(I'll add more later if possible, don't worry. =P)

Yes... this comp I'm using for this is really that slow. However, it doesn't really feel like it(unless you are doing some encoding and CPU heavy stuff then...).

=P And so ends my first rambling on Windows 7 Beta. It has given me a good overall impression... even though I think it is quite easy to impress me... maybe. =D

Note: I actually wanted to post this with IE8 Beta... but it kinda hates Blogspot and I had to install Firefox first(which works fine in Windows 7).

EDIT: Oh, how could I forget this! The best way for me to explain Windows 7's current features(better) is by giving out this very link to the official website. So check it out!