Microsoft is officially releasing Windows 7 Beta 1 (Build 7000) today.
Windows 7 is basically a Vista layout, but it runs even faster and smoother than XP. It has a lot of enhanced features and new technology - such as touch-screen capability, handwriting to text, new features for open windows. It has everything Vista has, and more - but runs much faster.
Windows 7 is said to require much less computer resources than Vista or XP.
Minimum requirements:
* Processor: 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
* Memory: 1 GB of system memory
* Hard drive: 16 GB of available disk space
* Video card: Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB memory (in order to enable Aero theme)
* Drive: DVD-R/W drive
* Internet connection (to download the Beta and get updates)
The Beta is going to be released on
this page (so they say) sometime this afternoon
FOR FREE! There is no announced time.
They are limiting it to 2.5 million downloads (which will go fast). It probably will be annoying since the servers will most likely be overloaded by a ton of people at once.
I already have Windows 7 Beta...it's been released to developers for a few days now. Being a Vista-hater, I have to say I absolutely love this new OS. It's so fast and sleek and simple to use. I tried FFR on it with FF3 and it ran beautifully. So this would probably be a great thing to get for you people having problems running FFR on Vista.
The only catch is, this Beta version will only be activated until August 2009 (although I'm sure there will be cracks for it by that time which will disable the deactivation). I'm definitely keeping it because I've never been happier with an OS. And remember, this is still a BETA so it's not guaranteed to be completely stable, so
download at your own risk. Personally, I haven't found any bugs yet and it runs just like a full release so far.
One thing to add. Windows 7 comes with IE8 Beta preinstalled. I could not run FFR on IE8 Beta because it would lag a lot. FF3 worked great though. I'm sure IE7 would work as well; haven't tried it though.
To all of you who decide to get this great OS, enjoy!
Make sure you are within the first 2.5 million people to download.
Happy downloading!