Adventures in Windows 7 Beta – Part 1
Windows 7 Desktop
I am not really a great stranger to Windows Beta product. I courageously (and sometimes foolishly) plunge myself into new products as they are released to see what the next big thing that is on offer from the “Church of Redmond”.
Over the years I have approached this task with a little more sophistication than previous attempts (thank you VMWARE, VirtualBox and similar products). No longer do I risk my digital lifelines attempting to jam sometimes less than perfect code into my hard drive. A buggy operating system beta no longer means loss of computing capability, merely a virtual hard drive to discard.
Even with these life saving facilities of virtualisation, I probably still wouldn’t recommend this type of activity for the computer novice. Beta software is just that, beta software. No guarantees or support. You are on your own! However, if you are an adventurous type, have hard drives to spare or boxes to sacrifice, venture forth into the computer future and see exactly how it will shape up.
The Download
After seeing the less than stellar way that this promised product was brought into existance (Windows 7 Beta delay), I was wondering if this was a shape of things to come. The initial reports about the Beta release were positive (Windows 7 Review, Windows 7 Will Kill Desktop Linux), so I wasn’t too worried.
Initially I made several attempts to gain access to the download using my browser of choice, FireFox, and found that the download simply wouldn’t start. My first reaction was that this was due to excessive server load and millions of people trying to get in during the two week free for all offered by Steve Balmer. So I persisted…and persisted…..and persisted. Now I am not a great fan of Internet Explorer, since Firefox 3 I really haven’t looked back, but it is still there (of course), so I thought I would give it a try. Nice one Microsoft, limit access to the download only through your own browser will you! Very funny!.
Once the correct Microsoft approved browser was selected, the download was fairly straightforward and went essentially without a hitch. Approximately 2.44 GB later, a shiny new copy of Windows 7 Beta was sitting on my hard drive.
The Installation
I installed the Beta as a Virtual Machine on a Vista capable laptop (2GB RAM, Dual Intel 2.2GHz processors). I chose the VM profile for that of Vista as a start to see how it would run.
The installation process was mostly flawless. The only “gotcha” I encountered was that the installer didn’t recognise the fact that it was being installed onto a fresh clean virtual disk and gave me an option to upgrade which obviously wouldn’t work given the circumstances and merely sent me back to the beginning of the process.
A great feature on each of the different installation screens was a help link taking the user to a help topic about the particular stage of the installation. Some of these pages were blank but I would expect that will be fix by the time the final release is distributed.
Aside from that one “gotcha” (which may well be just a beta issue) the installation was simple and straightforward and most importantly without error.
Initial Use
This is my first entry in this series where I will discuss Windows 7 Beta in more depth and review some of the great new (and less than great new) features.
A few features out of the gate that really stick in my mind with the process I have undertaken so far.
Activation
Without getting into a religious argument over the rights and wrongs of this particular functionality (I personally hate it myself), they have made the activation process fairly transparent. The use is presented with an option to have activation undertaken automatically once connected to the Internet. Should be noted however that this was not actually what happened. I did need to manually activate the product myself. At this point (and given I have only undertaken one installation), I will give the benefit of the doubt to Microsoft and assume that some issue occurred with the virtual network. Stay tuned on this one
Security Settings
You are presented with three security setting options; recommended updates, critical security updates only or ask me later. Bring this decision into the installation process I think is a good idea, and I guess for the purposes of flexibility, an “ask me later” option needed to be included. Microsoft still have some way to go to remove their security-hole-riddled image, but this is a positive sign at least.
Help and Support Links
On every window near the minimise/maximise buttons is a link to report a bug. Most likely a way of easily getting feedback on the beta version and possibly something that will be removed for the final production
Homegroup
One striking new feature is the Windows 7 homegroup. This is networking for the home user who simply wants to share all their resources amongst their home network. The options for sharing can include everything from files to hardware resources such as printers. While on the plus side, following the option to create your homegroup does come with a system generated complex password; on the minus side, I can see this being a very interesting avenue of potential attack. Providing the ability to mass share anything is rarely a good thing. However time will tell I guess.
Overall Opinion
Initial impressions are positive. As mentioned above, I will explore further this shiny new offering and see if that impression holds up.
A point of interest that I will be keenly looking at as we move towards a production release is exactly how Microsoft will deploy it. There is much resentment over Vista and what it never really achieved as a replacement to XP. With Windows 7 shaping up to be very Vista-like, will this just be seen as a very expensive service pack for Vista?
Watch this space.