Windows 7 Beta

[Americano]

Is anyone here going to try it? I read where today's release had demand that supposedly exceeded the resources MS had devoted to it and they shut down for a period. Google's release of Chrome claimed that same response. I'm still on XP and obviously cautious about changing operating systems.

[dilettante]

Is anyone here going to try it? I read where today's release had demand that supposedly exceeded the resources MS had devoted to it and they shut down for a period. Google's release of Chrome claimed that same response. I'm still on XP and obviously cautious about changing operating systems.

I'm at a point where I'm not willing to switch to a new Windows OP until they've had a few good months to uncover all the egregious security flaws they habitually leave in the software. I'm also still with XP and, thus far, I'm pretty content with it.

[partofme]

I bought a new computer recently and I'm on Vista and I've had no problems.

[Michael]

On my home machine, I've only just upgraded from 98v2 up to XP in the last six months. Win 98v2 worked just fine for me - never had any problems with it and all my software ran fine - especially a bunch of old DOS based progs. Now with XP I've lost usage of my old DOS programs. A few of them function (barely) and others need emulators and all kinds of tricks like that to get them to work (not worth it).

I figure I'm probably about five to ten years away from even considering a change from XP. With Microsoft, I've learned over the years that 'upgrading' the OS is not always desireable and I'd never do it with anything less than a new machine.

As a general rule, Microsoft just keeps adding features that I don't need or don't want that makes the new OS even more bloated than the last one. Why doesn't Microsoft sell a 'stripped down' version of the OS without the 101 bells and whistles that cause all the problems? That might be an attractive option. My home computer is never going to be used as anything but a stand-alone desktop machine and for net surfing. That's it. I don't need 90% of the crap that makes up the rest of the OS.

[The Drunk Guy]

I got a new laptop back in the summer and it came with Vista. The only problem I've had is that I can't play some of the older games I have. Other than that, I really like some of it's features. I've grown up using Windows, so I'm sure these are features used on some other OS that I have no experience with, but I still like them. ;)

[drgoodtrips]

The idea of a Microsoft Beta is a bit of a Catch-22 for me. I have MSDN licenses and the same thing happened with Vista (Longhorn, when they sent me the Beta). I wouldn't want to put a Beta version of anything made by Microsoft on an expensive/powerful machine, yet each new piece of their software requires a state of the art machine to run.

If they let me pull all of the crap out of the kernel, I'd run a Beta version on one of my hold ~300 Meg RAM machines. That's the only place any Microsoft Beta is getting any play for me :)

[Zedrow]

I got the beta yesterday and plan on installing it on one of my old machines this weekend if I have time.

I avoided Vista luckily. I generally wait about 3 - 6 months after release before trying a new OS from MS but I'm not even going to look at Vista (I did the same for Millennium too).

Since I have a few machines that can handle it (32 bit that is) I'm giving it a shot.

[Dominick]

I've got Vista on a recently bought PC almost exclusively in use for games and as a mp3 player frontend (the actual files are on a Linux box who is file-server (and web-, database-, and whatnot-server)).
I'm not too critical about it. You can get rid of much of the user-visible bloatedness. I don't have issues with memory scarcity or CPU hogging. But that requires some effort : everything resorts to 'classic' where possible -that you're going to pay for having transparent windows is obvious- and all unnecessary background tasks and processes are disabled, and so on.
There's a Catch 22 here on Microsoft's part. The kind of people who are willing to make the effort to tweak their Vista (or XP or older) will eventually go Linux. The tweaking is much more fun and effective there. The people who don't, will want a PC that does everything out-of-the-box. But that requires that every conceivable mainstream and not so mainstream task is possible without additional setup. That means that everything has to be in the kernel or at least pre-installed and up and running at every boot. That's a heap of stuff and will be criticized as bloatedness. They can't win here.

Having said that, I have no interest in the β7 or the ensuing new Windows version. I won't need it.

[drgoodtrips]

I got the beta yesterday and plan on installing it on one of my old machines this weekend if I have time.

I avoided Vista luckily. I generally wait about 3 - 6 months after release before trying a new OS from MS but I'm not even going to look at Vista (I did the same for Millennium too).

Since I have a few machines that can handle it (32 bit that is) I'm giving it a shot.

Let me know how that goes for you, and what the memory usage is like, if you don't mind. If I think that I can get it running reasonably on a 384 or 512 RAM machine, I might try it, just for shits and giggles.

[drgoodtrips]

Oh, hey... while I'm here, do either of you guys use Linux distributions with SELinux? And, if so, what do you think of it (if this is off topic too far, feel free to stick it somewhere else)?

It's really annoying me, and I'm thinking of disabling it, unless a compelling reason not to presents itself.

[Americano]

Let me know how that goes for you, and what the memory usage is like, if you don't mind. If I think that I can get it running reasonably on a 384 or 512 RAM machine, I might try it, just for shits and giggles.

Got this from another forum:

"I'm actually a bit impressed with it. Running on a partition on my XP box with only a gig of ram almost as well as XP. Some web pages heavy on content get a bit jerky, but all the system tasks seem to run much cleaner than Vista. And a lot of the GUI features are just cool. Particularly the "peek" at desktop thing, and the ability to simply run the cursor over the little previews of the windows and have them spring right up on top of everything. Its quite similar in appearance to Vista Aero, just slicker, a lot less bloated. I haven't tried running any games or graphics intensive apps yet...just having a stable beta running is novelty enough at the moment..."

[Dominick]

Oh, hey... while I'm here, do either of you guys use Linux distributions with SELinux? And, if so, what do you think of it (if this is off topic too far, feel free to stick it somewhere else)?

It's really annoying me, and I'm thinking of disabling it, unless a compelling reason not to presents itself.
HATE it, HATE it, HATE it.
Disable it, destroy it, remove it, crunch it.

rm -f SELINUX

;)

[drgoodtrips]

HATE it, HATE it, HATE it.
Disable it, destroy it, remove it, crunch it.

rm -f SELINUX

;)

lol... it was developed by the NSA. How's that for a fun little tidbit?

[Dominick]

lol... it was developed by the NSA. How's that for a fun little tidbit?
Yeah, I know and that's precisely the problem. Standard, well-configured Linux security is more than sufficient to meet everyday needs. The layer that SELinux adds is only marginal in terms of security but decreases useability by a much larger factor. I'm sure there are applications or users that have security needs that outweigh the loss in productivity, but to apply it indiscriminately is just paranoia. The 'bad guys' -to remain in the idiom- have limited resources too.
Besides, the number one security risk is, and will always be social engineering and that can't be put in the kernel.

[drgoodtrips]

Excellent points. I mostly use slackware, and my older RH distros have never had SELinux available, much less default to having it enabled. So, it took a lot of hair-tearing before I even discovered that this thing was running and causing problems after I installed the latest Fedora. What I don't understand is why it would default to enabled on Linux distributions.

[Dominick]

Excellent points. I mostly use slackware, and my older RH distros have never had SELinux available, much less default to having it enabled. So, it took a lot of hair-tearing before I even discovered that this thing was running and causing problems after I installed the latest Fedora. What I don't understand is why it would default to enabled on Linux distributions.
The conspiracy theory is that it provides the NSA and/or similar organizations a backdoor to your computer. :lol:
To be honest, I don't consider that the least credible CP I've ever heard.

[drgoodtrips]

The conspiracy theory is that it provides the NSA and/or similar organizations a backdoor to your computer. :lol:
To be honest, I don't consider that the least credible CP I've ever heard.

I don't know. By the time the NSA gets done culling out everyone who has ever had a whiff of marijuana or done anything naughty, I doubt you're left, as a rule, with the best and brightest.

[Zedrow]

Let me know how that goes for you, and what the memory usage is like, if you don't mind. If I think that I can get it running reasonably on a 384 or 512 RAM machine, I might try it, just for shits and giggles.

Update: I installed it on a 2.6 GHz with 512MB of RAM and it is running very well. It has an old video card (can't remember the specs right now) and just the on boards sound card.

I ran an app that tells me how well the system will perform based on my hardware and it only rated 1 out of ten, but it is not bogging down at all.

I'm going to try installing some other apps to see if it slows the system down at all. I'm trying to think of what I can install. I've got about 40gig of space, of which I believe ~16Gig is devoted to the OS. I'm thinking of installing an anti virus and maybe a CAD program or something, possibly even Visual Studio, but I'm open for suggestions from anyone to see what I can run to try to bog down the system.

[Americano]

Update: I installed it on a 2.6 GHz with 512MB of RAM and it is running very well. It has an old video card (can't remember the specs right now) and just the on boards sound card.

I ran an app that tells me how well the system will perform based on my hardware and it only rated 1 out of ten, but it is not bogging down at all.

I'm going to try installing some other apps to see if it slows the system down at all. I'm trying to think of what I can install. I've got about 40gig of space, of which I believe ~16Gig is devoted to the OS. I'm thinking of installing an anti virus and maybe a CAD program or something, possibly even Visual Studio, but I'm open for suggestions from anyone to see what I can run to try to bog down the system.

Biggest hogs I've found are proprietary digital camera programs for developing raw format images.