Posted by Ub3rG33k on May 28, 2009 in
Microsoft Just got the below email from Microsoft regarding their Beta tests of Windows 7
Exploring Windows: Special Beta Edition — Correction
Because you signed up to test the Windows 7 Beta, we recently sent you mail about the expiration dates for the Beta and Release Candidate. Unfortunately, we made a mistake.
We said the Beta would start shutting down every two hours on June 1, 2009. The correct date is July 1, 2009.
The rest of the dates in the mail were correct. Here’s a quick summary:
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Version:
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Starts shutting down every two hours:
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Expires:
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Beta
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July 1, 2009
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August 1, 2009
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Release Candidate
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March 1, 2010
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June 1, 2010
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We apologize for the error and any confusion it may have caused.
Thanks again for helping us test Windows 7.
Tags: 7, August, august 1, Beta, Beta Edition, beta tests, Beta
July, Candidate
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Posted by Ub3rG33k on May 5, 2009 in
Microsoft As some of your are probably aware, Microsoft are letting people try the new Windows 7 for free
If you sign up now over at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7 , they will allow you to download the latest RC (Release Candidate), and this licence will then last until March 1st 2010 !
Morn FAQ’s on Windows 7 here
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/faq.aspx
Tags: 7, candidate, Download, FAQ, licence, March, Microsoft, Morn, release, release candidate, sign, windows
Posted by Ub3rG33k on Feb 19, 2009 in
Microsoft 
I’ve decided to give Windows 7 another go, as there have been a few driver updates. This time in changed my SATA2 drive to Native mode instead of AHCI, and the install went flawless.
Once up, Windows downloaded 5 updates, and had 4 additional drivers for my Bluetooth dongle, Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit LAN, ATI 2900 Graphics card, Razer Copperhead gaming mouse.
The spec of my machine is as follows
ASUS M2R32-MVP
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
4Gb OCZ 6400 Memory
ATI 1Gb HD2900 XT PCI-e
1 x 500Gb Western Digital SATA2 Drive
2 x 250Gb Western Digital SATA2 Drives
1 x Pioneer 112 DVD-RW (Again wiped out the Pioneer 212 SATA drive as this again caused issues)
Onboard ADI 1988A Soundcard (Wiped out the SoundBlaster Xtreme Gamer sound card, don’t ask !)
Acer AL2216 Monitor
Acer AL1916 Monitor
Razer Copperhead Gaming Mouse
Logitech G15 Gaming keyboard
Creative 5.1 Surround speakers.
Windows 7 now works fine, with the new driver updates, and the download of the Logitech G15 driver and utility, everything seems smooth. I did however have a problem where every 5 minutes or so, Windows would give me a BSOD with a tdx.sys error message, however after a little bit of googling, it seems Windows 7 has a problem with AVG Free anti-virus.
Granted I was only up and running for a few hours last night, but I did a little bit of testing.
Steam, worked fine, all games apart from World of Goo seemed to work ok, apart from all games being at a status of “Download Started…”
Warcraft worked fine, infact better than fine, I saw an increase of over 20 frames per second.
Itunes, worked flawlessly
Left 4 Dead work, and worked very well, without a glitch
Gadgets I’ve tried, and worked.
WhetherBug
Multi Meter (D)
Network Meter v2.1
GMail Checker
Utorrent Gadget
Now this is running fine on my main machine, I will create further blogs as I decide if I love/hate Microsoft’s latest operating system. So far I think it’s quicker, uses resources better, is stable, however it’s still early days.
I would like to point out that I have a lot of 720p content on my NAS drive, and without installing any video or audio codec, it played the videos straight out of the box, very impressive
Tags: 112, 1988a, 2900, 4, 7, acer, adi, ahci, al1916, al2216, amd athlon 64, amd athlon 64 x2 6000, asus, ati, Beta, bluetooth dongle, bsod, card, copperhead, dead, digital, Download, drive, driver, driver updates, fine, free anti virus, g15, gaming, gaming mouse, gigabit lan, googling, graphics card, itunes, LAN, left, logitech, logitech g15 gaming keyboard, M2R32, machine, Monitor, mouse, mouse logitech, MVP, native mode, pioneer, problem, razer, razer copperhead, sata, soundblaster, soundcard, steam, tdx, tdx.sys, warcraft, Western, windows
