Direct from Microsoft newsletter:

1. Limited time to test Windows 7 - To avoid interruption, you'll need to rebuild your test machine using a valid version of Windows before the software expires. Windows will notify you that the expiration process is beginning and two weeks later your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. The Beta expires on August 1, 2009, and bi-hourly shutdowns will begin July 1, 2009. The RC will expire June 1, 2010, and the bi-hourly shutdowns will begin on March 1, 2010. In both cases, you'll need to rebuild your test PC to replace the OS and reinstall all your programs and data.

2. Path to RC - If you are running Windows 7 Beta or Windows XP, you'll need to back up your data (preferably on an external device) and then do a clean installation of Windows 7 RC. After installing Windows 7, you will need to reinstall applications and restore your files. If you are running Windows Vista, you can upgrade to RC.

1. Windows XP Mode (beta):We know that compatibility is a big issue for many small businesses. Which is why we are excited to announce the availability of Windows XP Mode (beta). This new feature allows Windows 7 Professional users to run many Windows XP productivity applications seamlessly in Windows XP Mode. Utilizing Windows Virtual PC, Windows XP applications can be launched with a single click directly from the Windows 7 desktop.

Hi,

not completely true. It is perfectly possible to upgrade the Windows 7 beta to the RC and is documented by Microsoft. It is simple to do, you can find out more here
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=922&page=5

It is just that Microsoft would prefer people to test more realistic scenarios, which are upgrades from Vista or clean installs. Is to be scene if this will be possible in terms of upgrading from the RC to the RTM build.

Considering that informed speculation is that Windows 7 is likely to be released this year, being able to run the RC build until July next year is pretty reasonable. It is just that after March the machine will reboot every 2 hours.

Also XP Mode for Windows 7 will only run if you have a computer that supports either Intel or AMD hardware virtualisation and that is enabled in the BIOS. It is not easy sometimes to work out which CPUs support it.

I bought a new computer at the weekend and it has an E2200 cpu which is a dual core Pentium and it does not support hardware virtualisation so no XP Mode for me.

I have been running the Windows 7 beta since January and Windows 7 RC since it was released on MSDN last week. I am very happy with it and when I am using Vista I do miss some of the UI improvements such as the Jump Lists.

Have fun

Martin

Hi everyone,

Yep, XP Mode looks pretty cool, a way for Windows to finally split out all the legacy bits needed for backward compat! And hopefully it'll encourage Intel in particular to stop pulling good, useful features from ships for purely marketing reasons!
I've been running 7 Beta, and now RC, on my netbook (Acer Aspire One D150 - Atom N280, 1Gb RAM, 160Gb HDD, Intel GMA950) since I got it about a month ago. It runs fine, no performance problems, and no driver issues either. Even the integrated 3G modem's drivers and support apps installed and worked first time. In fact it’s what I’m typing this post on!

I'm a fan of NT6 generally , in my experience even the much maligned Vista was a substantial improvement over XP/NT5. Server 2008 was a revelation compared to even the very good 2003, and now 7 looks like being a really good, solid OS.

OK, M$ propaganda over!

The link you supplied isn't from Microsoft, it's from zdnet, a publication which is owned by CBS Interactive. The journalist who wrote the article is a freelancer and book author named Ed Bott.

hi,

here is the original Microsoft article to which Ed Bott is referring

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/200...xperience.aspx

This is the Windows 7 engineering blog. I just didn't have this link immediately to hand. Naturally, the Windows 7 testing team would prefer that you do a fresh install:



"Here’s what you can do to bypass the check for pre-release upgrade IF YOU REALLY REALLY NEED TO:

1. Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
2. Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
3. Browse to the sources directory.
4. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000 (pictured below).
6. Save the file in place with the same name.
7. Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

These same steps will be required as we transition from the RC milestone to the RTM milestone."

Sorry for the confusion.

Have fun

Martin

You guys probably already know these sites, but for anyone who's interested there's some good Windows 7 related articles on Mark Russinovich's blog

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/

The 'Pushing The Limits' posts in particular have some interesting comparisons on various aspects of system resource usage and limitations between the last few versions of Windows client and server.

And on WinSuperSite there's a whole Windows 7 section

http://www.winsupersite.com

Windows 7 official release date for consumer shelves around Oct 23 2009.
read more