back to article Microsoft: Don't rush to download Windows 7 RC

Microsoft is advising people against rushing to download the Windows 7 Release Candidate, which became broadly available today. The company has also reminded potential testers they won't be getting a gratis operating system, pointing out that while the Windows 7 RC 1 won't expire until next June, it will expire. No-doubt …

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  1. jake Silver badge

    Thanks, Tim!

    "Reg reviewer Tim Anderson reckoned Windows 7: "At least looks like a sound return to the company's core competency.""

    That bad, eh? Thanks for the heads-up; I'll give it a pass, then.

  2. Kevin

    hmmm...

    "The advice on Windows 95 was for a 386DX processor and 4Mb memory"

    I pulled it on a 16MHz 386 SX with 4 megs of ram took 35minutes to boot... seriously

    "You could get away with a 233MHz processor and 64MB memory on Windows 2000."

    Hmm I ran it for over 290days with no downtime on a P1 133 with 256 megs of ram. it was used as a web, FTP server, and router it ran perfectly fine and only went down when we had a blackout do to a failed UPS.

    "The fudging of the hardware numbers on Windows Vista landed the company in court."

    Can't argue that seen so many PCs that were made for vista, or had it on them, that Vista chugged along horribly. Kinda reminded me of my 386 with windows 95.

  3. Chris Seiter
    Thumb Down

    Tempting Virus Target

    All that needs to be done is to write a virus that either changes the internal clock time to the 10th every time you reboot or change the license key to an expired one. This is like the newspaper article telling everyone what the countermeasures are against printing funny money.

  4. N

    No rush

    To download anything remotely like Vista

  5. James

    reverse psychology

    1. Give it away for free.

    2. make it expire.

    3. make people buy it when it does expire

    4. profit!!?!

    I actually like it so far. I am thinking about making it my primary OS.

  6. Rick Giles
    Linux

    And this is different how?

    "Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours..."

    Sounds like a normal day of using M$ Windoze.

  7. mike
    Joke

    Bi-hourly shutdowns...

    But surely windows needs to be restarted at least once per hour anyway just for it to work?

  8. Gary F

    I will take my time - NOT

    So the RC is ready to download and MS are asking us to take our time and wait a few days, weeks, maybe a couple of months before we download it. Yeah, as if! I was downloading it the very minute it was made available.

    Anyone interested in tested it out or actually using it on their main PC isn't going to take their time and wait - apart from the 9 hours it took me to download on a 8Mbit connection. I think their distribution network was limiting the bandwidth per client to stop it collapsing!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Don't rush to download Windows 7 RC

    Erm, don't worry, I won't...

    Still going fine with XP: just sorted out ghosting software for my fresh re-install of XP. I'm now ready for a try-out of Ubuntu in the very near future.

  10. Timbo
    Thumb Down

    For all the virtualization talk.....

    W7 RC don't seem to like running virtualized applications, at least most of the Thinapp based ones I've tried so far.

  11. wsm
    Thumb Up

    Amazing

    Microsoft turning customers away? Well, they always did have trouble with "setting expectations" as their training manuals called it.

    For what it's worth, I got the RC last week and, like nearly everyone on the forums who wanted it, I can say it's a success as a replacement for Vista. It puts all of the fixes in the right spots and works on just about everything from netbooks to servers.

    The only stumbling block is the virtualization compatibility requirement for the CPU. But that's meant for newer boxes anyway.

  12. Medium Dave
    Coat

    "...shutting down every two hours"

    ... What can you say?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wait Hold up

    Aww come on MS. But I was soooooooooooooooooooooo looking forward to. To. To. Well actually totally ignoring this beta release and the next beta release known as the retail box. Probably every iteration of windows past XP that I can until the couple games I play no longer operate properly under it. So yeah I absolute will not be in any kind of rush to get this bit of bloatware.

  14. Nick
    Jobs Halo

    Yawn...

    OS X all the way...

  15. vincent himpe

    so

    you will need one of those intel based cray boxes to run it smoothyl i guess..

  16. Philip Bath
    Boffin

    Windows XP Mode

    Does the new XP mode give you a choice of running it in 64 bit or 32 bit edition or is it fixed to what you have Windows 7 as?

    i.e. I am installing Windows 7 64 bit, but really want a 32bit virtual pc.

    Should I just install as normal or is there something else I need to do?

    Cheers

  17. J
    Joke

    To avoid interruption...

    So long, and thanks for all the free beta tester work, suckers!

  18. WinHatter
    Coat

    your PC will begin shutting down every two hours

    For once I'll follow M$ piece of advice, I'll wait till June 3011.

    Well, people may not have to wait that long to see their PC crashing down every 2 hours.

    I know M$ said shutting ... I say crashing ... tomayto tomato ...

    /mine's the one made of apple fed penguin pelt

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Well to be fair...

    I run the beta on a steaming pile of Fujitsu Siemens Pentium 4m with 1GB ram and it runs fine.

    The reboot every two hours thing? - my laptop cooks itself and goes thermal shutdown at about two hours anyway!

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Why bother?

    Don't really understand why you'd slow your computer down and fill it up with shite just to run your software more slowly in an emulator.

    It's like buying a Mac and using it to run Windows apps. If you don't appreciate or can't use the native OS, why bother spending the extra money?

    Windows XP works, even if it is a security nightmare. Windows 7 seems to be just another Vista, with more changes just for the sake of changing things and more glitz to cover up how slow and unreliable it really is.

    Why would I ever bother to use an OS that slows my PC down with absolutely zero benefits? If you're going to say it's more secure, I'm going to laugh at you for being a complete and utter moron.

    Tell me, have they worked out how to copy and delete files yet in less than 10 times it takes to do the same thing on any other OS, including many of their own?

    Will it still ask me stupid questions? Will it still refuse to update my software because I don't have access rights to my own software? Will the first service pack actually make things worse? Does real anti-spyware and anti-virus software work under Windows 7 or has it been deliberately disabled like it was in Vista? Have drivers been written for industry standard hardware yet? Will the drivers you can get be usable or the botched, unreliable hacks independent hardware vendors are still forced to create today?

    When you can show me a new version of Windows that isn't a piece of complete shit wrapped up in a shiny skin, I might be interested.

    If Windows 7 is just another Vista, you might as well get a Mac. Because the only reason for running Windows has always been the hardware is cheap for the performance you get. If you need to spend as much on hardware as you would for a Mac, you might as well get the computer that has a reliable and working OS. Even if Apple are a bunch of arrogant arsehats with the customer service of.. well Microsoft, it's still better than spending a fortune on hardware to run an operating system more slowly and more unreliably, with less working software.

    Fuck me I never thought I'd say Macs make sense economically, but it actually looks like happening.

  21. Ben Lambert
    Flame

    Hardware spec? So what?

    So you expected MS to give you a system that was exactly the minimum spec? It sounds to me like they gave you a normal system. It's not like they gave you an Alienware or something extreme.

    Sheesh. Can the reg at least TRY to be unbiased?

  22. Alain Godet
    Happy

    No crash

    Strange, but I downloaded with no problem Windows 7 this morning. Seems this product interests users as much as Vista. Personally, I stitch to OS X...

  23. Steven Raith
    Alert

    Windows requirements

    "The advice on Windows 95 was for a 386DX processor and 4Mb memory, but it was recommended you actually had a 486 and 8MB."

    *cough*

    I had a 486SX and 4MB RAM - it wouldn't install on my machine at all.

    Was the "maths coprocesser"/FPU support [what made the difference between the SX and DX lines as I recall - and oh how I remeber lusting after a 100mhz 486 DX4*...] a requirement at the time? I might have missed that.

    Anyway, I have an Athlon Thoro' 2400 XP here which I couldd pull half a gig out of and wap Win 7 RC1 onto - I might do it this weekend to see how it performs. Most processors from the last four years will piss all over the once mighty Thoro [OK, not as good as the mobile barton, but good bang for buck nonetheless] so it's a pretty good testbed to see what the requirements are like.

    I don't really have a problem with Windows having ever higher requirements - keeps me in the business of building machines for mates!

    Steven R

    *PS:: I was about ten or eleven back when I had that - how the hell can I still remember those details??? I am a bloody geek :-(

  24. Rob Welsh
    Stop

    1Gb and 1Ghz?

    Smells like bullshit to me. What exactly can you run with that, paint and fucking textpad? For goodness sake surely someone has tested this claim by now....

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    English?

    "Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start."

    Which one is it? bi-hourly is twice an hour, not every two hours.....

    Either way, what's different there than the normal experience on Windows??

  26. Shingo Tamai
    Gates Horns

    Take it slow ?!?

    Do you need to buy some vaseline too while you take it?

  27. Tom Maddox Silver badge
    Gates Halo

    In before the haters

    I expect to see a gusher of caustic vitriol from The Usual Xuspects(TM) touting the advantages of Linux which, somehow, despite its amazing superiority, manages never to get more than 1% of the desktop market. And, of course, I think we can count on the TUXers never having actually used 7 and thus not actually being able to contribute anything meaningful to the conversation except to rehash tired cliches about Windows while continuing to overlook the many shortcomings of Linux as a desktop operating system.

    Come on, guys, don't let me down.

  28. Matt

    1ghz + 1gb ram?

    Well I downloaded the RC this morning, came down my connection nice and fast... using the download tool the speed was the same as if I was using a newsgroup :)

    It installed flawlessly on my PC a Sony UX1XN UMPC- the specs being 1.33ghz Core Solo, 1gb Ram 30gb SSD, what can it do? a lot more than just run paint!! cold boot to working desktop, including biometric logon - 35 seconds!!! resume from hibernation - 22seconds, opening IE8 - 2.5 seconds, Outlook 2007 - 2.7 seconds... not bad for a computer that does fit in my trousers pocket!

    you lot can keep your bloody XP! in this machine win7 is FASTER by some margin than XP ever was, loging on, opening apps, aesthetics, everything!!

  29. Arnold Lieberman
    Thumb Up

    Ancient laptops and Xubuntu

    I took the opportunity of doing some experiments as it just so happens that I dropped my laptop last week so needed a new hard drive. Downloaded latest xubuntu (9.04) when it came out on my loverly if underpowered Latitude X1 - great, all hardware detected and it seems to work fine. Shame bluetooth support still isn't sorted and power management (even when configures as a laptop) is still dire. It managed to flatten an extended battery in under 2 hours - where I was getting nearer to 4h30 under XP SP3. And about 30 updates each day thereafter keeps the 3G card busy. And yes, I spent ages fiddleing about with wireless power settings etc. I won't even go into the hassle of getting Windoze shares working under Thunar. Maybe next year...

    On went Windoze 7 on Saturday (thanks MSDN), video and sound not detected immediately but one update later and all drivers are installed. Running sweetly on just 512Mb RAM (about 100Mb Free, soon to be upgraded anyway) with enough oomph to get Firefox going nicely. All in all, pretty impressed so far, bluetooth PAN working flawlessly and battery time back to where it was. Even though the graphics score exactly 1.0 windows redraw very fast. Certainly a vast improvement over the abortion that was Vista.

  30. Goat Jam
    Linux

    Don't mention the war!

    So, I went and started the download. Hilariously, Microsoft asks you what operating system you are currently using.

    The list of options includes nothing but MS products, with "Other" slapped on the end.

    So, either they are doing the head in the sand thing and pretending that OS/X, Linux, BSD, Solaris etc all don't exist or they are assuming that anybody who has already switched to any one of these options will never go back to Windows.

  31. Henry Wertz Gold badge

    I think I can handle that...

    Don't rush to download Windows 7 RC? I think I can handle that, I don't intend to download it at all.

    As for the comments:

    1) If you get away from Windows, Thoroughbred Athlons, Pentium Ms, etc. are suddenly not some ancient piece. Even P3s are perfectly usable. Mac OS X recommends an 866mhz machine with 512MB... Ubuntu recommends a minimum 700mhz and 384MB of RAM (I've used Ubuntu on systems with those kind of specs and it's fine.) Thinking a 1.5-2.5ghz system with 1GB of RAM is somehow wimpy just shows how bad Windows has gotten.

    That said, from what I've read, Microsoft's recommendation is probably accurate. People online have put 7 onto 512MB systems and had it run acceptably. I'm not a Microsoft fan but I have to give them full credit for successfully debloating Vista. .

  32. Adrian Esdaile
    Thumb Up

    It runs fine

    ...on an Atom-based 1.4Ghz Asus N10, with 1GB RAM, with the processor clocking down to 700Mhz in battery-saver mode.

    Much smoother than Vista, equivalent to XP on the same machine. Sure, I have to clock the machine up to 1.4Ghz to use CAD (and use 2GB ram) but I had to do that with XP anyway, so whats the problem?

    It has a smaller footprint than Vista, and *far* better battery management than XP, so - WIN!

  33. Tony Reeves
    Pirate

    Who has the big sign on their wall to remove the 2 hour shutdown code?

    Will they remember, will they still be working at Microsoft?

    Anyone taking odds on the 2 hour shutdown bug remaining in the FCS code?

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    MS cracks the whip and we all jump through the hoops - Sure.

    Oh so many many vagaries.

    First NO upgrade path from XP to 7, now there is an up[ grade path.

    Then comes all the maybee's along with that - as well as the 52 varieties of Win 7, AND the astronomical rip off pricing.....

    Uhhhhhh OPEN SOURCE = Ubuntu Linux and Open Office, and some 25,000 free and brilliant programs.

    Much less head aches.

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    To Pay Is To Fail

    Oh just listen to the anti MS brigade; "Mac this, Mac that...."

    When will all the Mac braindead "get it" and get over it?

    The whole point to having MS windows and all its compatible software is to avoid paying a dime for any of it. Therefore, why would any of the freetard windows users want to rush out and purchase a Mac Machine? When, sooner or later the many millions of "freetards" will happen upon a free install of windows xp, vista, or soon to be 7 [final].

    Now, before all the geeks start spitting and blethering on about "virus, securtiy, bots...." it's just an OS on a machine, which if it becomes flawed with backdoors or infected at any time, then commons sense ought to be applied with another install of the OS.

    Afterall, a computer is just a machine and not a life controlling object. Though, if you find yourself being controlled by your Mac, Pc, netbook or whatever, then you really should get out a bit more and perhaps try something new like "flyfishing", or swimming with dolphins.

    Remember: To Pay is To Fail.

    Ps, Windows 7 does appear to use less resources than vista, and at last one can write an ISO to disc without any additonal software installs. Shame on MS for hijacking my HD audio drivers though.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    your "...PC will begin shutting down every two hours"

    Hot damn! They really HAVE improved it!

  37. John Goodwin
    Go

    Jaunty versus Windows 7

    I'll still be keeping my workhorse as Jaunty has been dead reliable. But although a UNIX afficionado, I've delved in the dark side and have been pleasantly surprised with the Beta and now RC1.

    Running in a virtualbox session with 512Mb, it just seems to run faster than Vista ever did - and I'd go so far as to say - on a par with XP.

    As for the shutdown every two hours, last time I experienced that nastiness was way back in the day of Win98.

    I'll probably whack it on the laptop and see how it goes. The girlfriend is Windows only, and gasps when I boot up with a different GUI hehe ;-)

    JB

  38. Slackness
    Linux

    I have to admit...

    I updated the kids pc from 64bit vista to 64/7 and there was a marked improvement, upgrade was very smooth and with zero errors.

    All the games that ran on Vista run on 64/7 the only app that failed was daemon tools (*I was pre-warned by 7) oh and Kaspersky required a reinstall as I had changed the OS.

    2.8ghz Core2 (O/C), 2 GB RAM, ATI 4670 Video

    Kids verdict.. s'ok (aged 12)

    Personally im sticking with my OpenSuse box as it does what I want and whats needed.

  39. Nick Mallard
    Go

    So whats wrong with it?

    Too many moronic bashers on here today starting with Vincent.

    Actually try it. I've had it running, and running well on Asus EEEpcs, it runs wonderfully on my 1gb el-crappo E machines laptop and a space Celeron D box with half a gig of ram. It runs better than XP. It runs a hell of a lot better than Vista. It's reliable, the beta's were solid for me and the RC is now my main OS installation. I will indeed be buying it on release.

    Why whinge about it cutting out every 2 hours after March? That's a long time of free OS useage which is beyond what they need to do, but probably necessary to help cut out the mental images Vista carved in.

    It's more intuitive than OSX and does just as good a job on a far larger array of hardware installations. It's outright better than Vista and they've finally sorted out 90% of the issues they had with it. It's a step forward from XP however I'm still annoyed we're stuck with 32bit, which is wholly unnecessary however they need to drag money out of people in all places possible.

    So, a good step forward by MS as far as I'm concerned. If you're going to bash it, do so constructively, and not just for the sake of it.

  40. Matt

    re Henry Wertz

    How can you comment on something you cant even be bothered to try?? for free!!

    OSX? i run Leopard on a Powerbook 1.67 with 2gb ram and Win7 blows that out of the water for speed on my 1.33 core solo...

    and bloat?? your specs are fine for the OSX vista timeframe release... when Win7 is released Apple will be obsoleting much newer and more powerful hardware.... 1year old top of the line macs wont be able to run the new core features of Snow Leopard and My 1.67ghz machine? the most powerful laptop apple made 3 years ago, well it wont even load on there! Im not even going to comment on linux, yes it may run, but for anything other than a server or appliance, god its awful!

    Win7, love or hate M$, is actually shaping up to be quite a decent OS...

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Re: English?

    Anonymous Coward wrote:

    "

    'Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start.'

    Which one is it? bi-hourly is twice an hour, not every two hours.....

    Either way, what's different there than the normal experience on Windows??"

    Actually you are thinking of the prefix semi. Bi-hourly means every two hours. Semi-hourly means twice an hour.

    Oh the sweet irony. Or perhaps it is to be expected. Be you i've got something wrong too.

    Paris because she doesn't know about semi either.

  42. Dale Vile
    IT Angle

    Lowest spec

    I have been experimenting with Windows 7 for a few months now on various machines. It runs very well on a Sony Vaio TZ with a 1.2 GHz core2 duo processor and 2Gb of memory, and that's with reasonably demanding use. Assuming an implicit dual core requirement in this, I would therefore say that Microsoft's 1GHz minimum processor spec is probably reasonable. While I haven't tried whipping memory out of the Sony, I did load Windows 7 onto another machine (an old Philips notebook) that had a faster processor but only 1Gb of memory. That did not run very smoothly until I put more memory into it. I would therefore suggests that 2Gb RAM is probably the safest working minimum for most situations.

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    So have you actually tried Windows 7 yet?

    I wonder just how many of the detractors have actually used Windows 7 beta or RC1? If Ladbrokes offered odds I'd be happy to put a tenner on less than 10% of the vocal anti-MS penguin shaggers having used Windows 7 or even Vista SP1.

    I for one think W7 works very well. I've even run it on a Samsung NC-10 and it performs better than Windows XP. I will be happy to adopt the production release early but like any sane person won't be truly happy until SP1 has landed and bedded in.

    Peace.

  44. Andy Worth

    Re:1Gb and 1Ghz?

    For once, MS might actually be telling the truth. I haven't gone quite as low as a 1GHz processor, but it certainly runs (and surprisingly well) on my Dell laptop with 1.4Ghz Celeron CPU and 1GB of RAM. I'd say that it is comparable with a fresh XP SP3 install on the same machine which is quite impressive really.

    They must have been quite clever in the way it scales itself according to your PC's performance. I haven't determined yet exactly what features it disables (aside from the Aero theme) but somehow they've made it run quite nicely on "slower" machines.

    @Henry Wertz

    Just on your point 1), I know exactly what you mean. Kit that becomes too slow to run XP can quite happily be used with a Linux install. In fact, using Linux as a base and some server-based virtualisation for app streaming (for apps that "require" XP) makes quite a nice replacement for a Windows XP desktop imho.

  45. Christopher Rogers
    Thumb Up

    Have to admit....

    It runs pretty well on my machine. AMD Athlon XP 2ghz processor, 1gb PC3200 nvidia 6600 256mb card on a GA-7N400 Pro2 mobo. My only annoyance is that it would not natively install on to a sata HD, preferring the older PATA drive. It won't win any speed records, but neither did XP on the same box and SUSE 11 is only MARGINALLY quicker (not enough to make me care).

  46. SuperTim
    Stop

    Minimum hardware......

    I dont think microsoft are the only ones who "fudge" their requirements. I recall minimum specs on software i have produced being so low the software was almost unusable, but still ran. You needed about 4 times the performance to get the best out of it, but we would only sell a quarter of the volume.

    Everyone knows that specs need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but will happily cry when their 386 doesnt run vista even though bill gates said we didnt need more than 640KB of memory!

  47. N

    @ AC

    If it shuts down every 30 minutes then thats no change

    But If it shuts down every two hours, thats an improvement over Vista!

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yup - core competency..

    Reg reviewer Tim Anderson reckoned Windows 7: "At least looks like a sound return to the company's core competency."

    That's right. After a while, it starts rebooting a lot. That is indeed a return to shooting at feet with both barrels. I'm not convinced it's a welcome one, although it correlates with the advice some Linux advocates have been giving installers to make migrated Windows users feel more at home: set up a background task that randomly restarts the machine every so often.

    MS can try to hype the new version as much as it wants, it has proven very clearly with Vista that the upgrade game is not strictly required to have functional IT. Avoiding the Vista downgrade has saved a lot of companies quite a bit of money, which is a nice thing to discover in times of a crisis.

    Almost everything I use now has a Linux equivalent, and that's where my stuff is going, with a bit of VM to take care of the fragments I cannot move yet (mostly mobile phone updaters). Collanos workspace, Freemind, Openoffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, SugarCRM, Truecrypt, PGP - no problem at all..

  49. Aaron

    I like it

    for all the neh sayer's out there id thought I would add that I hated vista it was one of the worst OS I've ever come across (yes that includes OS/2 Warp), however windows 7 I really like, sure it wont run on hardware that came off the ark but then microsoft never claimed it would. I run it on my laptop and my main pc and its smooth not resource hungry my game run well and im actually a little shocked and pleasantly surprised.

    As for the expiry, well of course there's an expiry it wouldn't make much sense to give away a near complete OS with no restrictions when they intend to sell the final product. I don't mind reinstalling before a years out hell I will probably do that several times because I like to fiddle play with new OS's and hardware.

  50. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Matt

    even if you are not a Microsoft sockpuppet, your abundant overuse of the exclamation mark is distinctly likely to engage the suspicious-minded

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