Microsoft pauses Windows 7 public beta due to overwhelming demand

I am quite happily writing this comment from a properly activated Win 7 Ultimate 32-bit install. This system dual-boots with Vista Ultimate. Got the ISO on a Torrent download, then followed Tayme's link to get me a proper key. When the beta expires, break out GParted as well as EasyBCD to go back to a Vista only system. Everything's working fine, from my ancient collection of DOS games* (like Wolf 3D) to Half-Life 2. * Disclaimer: Yeah, I'm using DOSBox

Once 7 final comes out, this laptop is getting an immediate upgrade. I'm enjoying 7 so far and can't wait to use the gold version when it comes out

"Windows servers not capable of serving large numbers of requests for large files." Tell that to NASDAQ. I think they'll disagree. "Rumours are circulating that Apple will move to CES as of next year." That is a rumor, but with Steve Jobs ego, I doubt it will happen, as he'd have to share the show, with gasp, anyone else.

@robertsjoe You are a complete Effing moron. From you link... "My general impression of Windows 7 so far is basically this. As soon as TigerDirect in Canada is taking pre-orders I’m jumping in on that line. I am sure that more than a few people will have negative things to say about it but in the 20 some years that I’ve been using Windows products this is really the first one in a long time that I really like. Where I would discourage people from using Vista I would in turn encourage them to use Windows 7."

Ok so I have the 64bit version up and running in a VM under VMware workstation 6.5 I gave it 2 cores, and 2gigs of RAM. The host is a quad core with 8gigs of RAM (XP 64bit). Its faster feeling for sure. However all new clean installs seem fast. Still I think its faster than default Vista, Aero on and animations in the default mode. When using Vista I go back to the classic mode and the GUI speed is drastically improved. I have also ran Vista with Aero on, but I have gone into the Advanced section/performance and killed off most of the animation stuff which will also speed up the feel of the GUI. It seems like MS has kept Aero on, but change the speed of the animations like I would do in Vista. Driver/Software wise its Vista. Java, Adobe Flash, Adobe reader, VMware tool (drivers for VMware), and Symantec Corporate Edition all installed fine, and when prompted for an OS I chose Vista. Those few software packages think its Vista. I think this OS will be adopted by the corporate world, which is where Vista is lagging BADLY. Its timing really. 1. This is what Vista should have been out of the box, as far as bug fixes and performance. 2. Third party application vendors have finally gotten used to UAC and how to program for it. IMHO implementing UAC was a must. However applications that had to run under full admin privileges had the most problems. Those have been fixed via patches, or by greedy software companies that charge for a new version to fix the problem. 3. Drivers have caught up to Vista, and from my little experience there will be little if any driver tweaking to get drivers to work with 7. Much like vendors will supply 2000/XP drivers and they are the same. 4. Hardware has gotten cheaper and faster. Putting 4 gigs of RAM in a PC when Vista came out was a $200+ price tag. Now $200 will get you 8gig and 4gig is under $100...heck easily had for under $40 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134582 Had 7 come out when Vista did #2 and #3 would have still been a problem. #4 maybe but if it runs better with 2gig than Vista first did (see #1), I knew plenty of people with XP and 2gig, gamers that is. Vista had to blaze the trail. Now if they could just release one version that allowed you to choose your pieces and parts, like 2008 does then they would have a home run IMHO. Two extensive tests I would like to see are network copy performance and notebook battery life. Test them with XP, Vista, 7 and OS X. Battery life is still better with XP vs Vista, and OS X is better than both. If 7 can fix that battery life it will go a long way. The network copy speed should be tested against a Samba server, Windows 2003 file server and Windows 2008 file server to be fair.

"popped the Windows 7 DVD into my 6 year old laptop which I knew didn't have drivers for some of its hardware, e.g. video. About 30 minutes later Windows 7 was fully installed and working. Boom." Actually the older machines are the most compatible. When a new version of Windows comes out it will be compatible to that date or shortly before that compared to hardware. Its afterward that it has problems as new hardware/chipsets come out it does not know about. I had a core duo (Not core 2) HP notebook that Vista would install on with out any drivers, or at least the fist Windows update would get the few that were missed. Installing XP on that PC (March 2007 time frame when new) required the old F6 driver, as in USB 3.5inch disket drive. XP would not see the hard drive with out the F6 driver because of the new SATA controller, unless I went into the BIOS and put in it "slow boat to china" mode and slowed the HD way down. After base XP was on it, I had to go to the hardware vendors, Intel, Realtek, etc because HP barely had any drivers for XP. The XP install took 3X longer. Now it ran faster than Vista:) Windows 7 should see even more hardware out of the box than Vista did.

Got Win7 32bit working with all drivers on Fujitsu E8110 I cant get Cisco VPN Client ver 5 to work, even with compatability mode. After installing it the reboot gives BSOD. Good thing recovery works like a charm and brings the system back with the Cisco client gone. Im loving Win7.

Windows 7 is impressive overall so far on this old 939 X2 system. I had a few minor issues, but nothing that is a show stopper. I love the new superbar but feel that they could make it easier to open a new instance of a program without resorting to a right click and navigating the jump list. The devs should also add the option to run a pinned item as administrator in the jump list to save clicks. I am going to test IE 8 for a few days, but so far I am leaning towards sticking with Firefox. I can't beleive I am saying this, but Firefox displays pages correctly more often than IE 8, even with compatibility mode on.

I've been using Firefox 3.0.5 on 7 and that seems pretty reliable to me. In fact I haven't experimented with 3.1 beta at all. (Which I should really given my work is in the field of web development!) I can't comment on 7 vs Vista because my Vista box (which is still great in my book) is another machine (a fairly good Core 2 Duo, 2GB and 2.6GHz) and this notebook was running XP before. Unfortunately my battery is shot to ribbons in this laptop (one of those many things I need to sort out) but it does seem to be no slower than XP was. It boots quickly all things considered but I'd expect that on a fresh install of XP or Vista too. My favourite bit is that large show desktop button, unfortunately not having a decent GPU I can't hover to make everything translucent but it's a bigger button target than the old Show Desktop quick launch item, and unlike 'hot spots' in OS X and KDE 4 for example, it requires a Click rather than doing it even if you've just moused over into the corner by accident. I do notice they have removed the old Windows 95-esque classic menu, which I'm not missing. Also in the Classic UI (W2k esque) the shut down combo box uses the old System font oddly enough. I've reported it. My big thumbs up is on these libraries, a very nice quick way to aggregate multiple locations into one. Somewhat similaiar to Saved Search Folders in OS X but not based on search or metadata, but rather just locations of files. For people who hold a massive amount of data this is quite good, I can see digital photographers liking that as a way to transparently keep your photos on a backed up piece of media. Even I can make use of it with my negative/slide scans (I'm still and probably always will be a film junky -- it's good to have other interests and arguably I'm more interested in photography, but what earns your crust!) Overall, seeing as I've used Vista a lot, there's not much to be surprised by but as alluded to, it's a nice refinement. I think the control panel has had a bit of a tidy up from Vista too which especially for network card configuration seemed to really work against everything you knew from XP for not a very good reason. I'm surprised because I was hoping I'd think "yeah it's good but it's slow on my T40" or whatever, and now I'm finding that I'll probably need two upgrade licenses to 7 when it's released. Damn! :) More money!