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#191793 - 2009-01-14 10:31 PM Testing Windows 7 Beta
Allen Administrator Offline
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Well, as I type this I am using the 7 Beta... installation was flawless, finding all my hardware. So far installed Firefox, Adobe Reader, and Flash... seems to be working. The Fonts seems different. The explorer bar is different, not sure better, but have found that you can reorganize your apps on the bar without having to install Taskbar Shuffle or Taskix, which is a way overdue. UAC seems much less intrusive, in fact so far not even really bothered me like it does in Vista.

More to come... anyone else trying it?

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#191795 - 2009-01-14 11:10 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Allen]
Allen Administrator Offline
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Well the taskbar is definitely different. Now Quicklauch is integrated into the taskbar, meaning you can pin your favorites to the taskbar like you do to the start menu. I didn't like the size so I changed it the small icons, and then the spacing was complete screwed. So I did a little digging and found that quicklauch as we have known for the past few versions of windows is not even an option unless you manually install it. Personally, I like the old quicklaunch better, so here is the instructions to re-enable it: http://www.blogsdna.com/2003/how-to-enable-disable-quick-launch-toolbar-in-windows-7.htm Once that is done, you can simply unpin the the shortcuts from the newer quicklauch and everything looks like it did before.
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#191802 - 2009-01-15 04:23 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Allen]
Mart Moderator Offline
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Installing Windows 7 Ultimate B1 on a spare laptop now.
Testing will start next Monday when our trainee starts. There will be some extra time when he takes some work out of our hands.
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#191803 - 2009-01-15 04:37 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Mart]
Allen Administrator Offline
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The more I use 7, the more it feels like Vista SP2. I mean that in a good way. If you are used to using Vista, you can hardly notice a change, other than the taskbar and the much friendlier UAC. Every program I have installed so far, that was Vista compatible, has worked. I have not noticed any noticeable speed differences.
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#191818 - 2009-01-16 04:16 AM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Allen]
Shawn Administrator Offline
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Hey Allen, thanks for giving me the kick I needed. Just downloaded the beta and currently installing it into VirtualBox ... so far so good, just need to hand-job some drivers ... not done yet.

So far I'm impressed. I purposely have been avoiding Vista like the plague. The little experience I have had with Vista has been painful to say the least.

Anyways, as a Windows XP die-hard, Windows 7 looks good so far. I was really impressed with the install ... dead simple and painless.

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#191819 - 2009-01-16 10:20 AM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Shawn]
Mart Moderator Offline
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W7 look promising up until now. As said earlier the install is smooth and surprisingly fast.

The first bump I encountered is RealVNC. We use the free version for remote support. Free version does not work with W7 (also Vista en Srv2008 among others).
See: http://www.realvnc.com/products/download.html. Looking into the options.
If that is the only problem I’ll be over the moon but let’s not get overexcited for now.

[edit]
Allen, I almost trashed my monitor trying to kill the bug that is crawling on it. Cool but annoying avatar
[/edit]


Edited by Mart (2009-01-16 10:24 AM)
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#191823 - 2009-01-16 12:04 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Mart]
Arend_ Moderator Offline
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Have tested it for 2 weeks now, but the only thing really bothering me is not being able to get the Classic Start Menu.
The 200 MB partition for booting is something I've been crying for since Windows 2000, this really is sooooo good. to elaborate about that a little bit, install XP on a 120GB Partition, at one point Windows won't boot anymore cos it can't find the ntldr anymore. Even defrag won't help you out then. While off course it is bad practive to have such big partitions for Windows, it is something that happens a lot when Vendors such as Asus and HP have preinstalled the system.

All in all Windows 7 is technically much better, I just hate the GUI for the reasons Allen pointed out and not being able to get the Classic Start Menu back.

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#191827 - 2009-01-16 01:59 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Arend_]
Allen Administrator Offline
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It's funny you guys point out the Classic Start Menu missing (I haven't even noticed)... because up until sometime last year I always used it. But at some point, I wanted to keep my desktop completely free of icons, and started using a combination of the newer Start Menu, the (now older) quicklaunch, and the option to hide desktop icons. Now, when I sit down at a computer and it still uses the classic, I'm fumbling around trying to remember how I used to do things. \:\)
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#191828 - 2009-01-16 02:05 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Arend_]
Shawn Administrator Offline
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Installed Windows 7 into VirtualBox and it went well - running fine. Not too sure I'm crazy about the GUI either. Had to hand-job two drivers (network driver and sound driver) from the Guest Additions but ran into that new "scary feature" of Windows 7 ... here's an excerpt from internet:

 Quote:

Now that the network driver is installed, we only need to wait a few seconds to install the sound driver. One of the cool (Or scary, depending on how you look at it) things about Windows 7 is that if some piece of hardware needs a driver, Windows 7 will just go out and look for it. In this case, it goes out to the internet, finds a driver for the Intel 82801AA AC’97 Audio Controller and installs it without any interaction from you. Kinda cool, huh?


So sure enough, installed the network driver and once up and running, it found and downloaded the sound driver under-the-covers.

-Shawn

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#191831 - 2009-01-16 05:35 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Shawn]
Shawn Administrator Offline
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Had to get rid of that default fighting-fish background. I don't know about that one.... I really like how Microsoft organized everything though (so far) ... not crazy about taskbar ...

-Shawn

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#191832 - 2009-01-16 11:59 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Shawn]
Allen Administrator Offline
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Very sweet... got a message with this in it today... looks like it will be coming out of beta about the same time as 7...

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V)
http://blogs.technet.com/mdop/archive/20...-available.aspx

 Quote:
For those of us on the MED-V product team, our primary goal was to deliver an enterprise virtualization solution for the compatibility challenges that IT teams have with some of their line-of-business applications, during the upgrade to new operating systems (like Windows Vista). With MED-V 1.0, you can easily create, deliver and centrally manage virtual Windows XP or 2000 environments (based on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007), and help your users to run legacy applications on their Windows Vista desktops. No need to wait for the testing and migration of those incompatible applications to complete.

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#191843 - 2009-01-19 09:16 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Allen]
Shawn Administrator Offline
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I really like the "new" task manager and resource monitor. Like how you can now select one of those pesky svchost.exe processes, then right-click, and it takes you to the service its hosting ...

-Shawn

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#191849 - 2009-01-20 06:08 AM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Shawn]
Glenn Barnas Administrator Offline
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Sounds like I'll have to spin up a VM guest or three when I get back.. Downloaded Win-7 from MSDN yesterday, but hit the road today for a week, so no time to play.

Glenn
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#191851 - 2009-01-20 03:02 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Glenn Barnas]
Benny69 Offline
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For those having trouble:

Windows 7 Beta.iso
Virtual PC 2007
Virtual PC 2007 SP1

Yes these are free, no need to burn the Win7Beta.iso to DVD, all you need to do is mount it in Virtual PC 2007.
I am running Vista, I installed Virtual PC 2007, created a new machine, mounted the .iso, installed the Beta, added no drivers, no fuss, no muss.





Edited by Benny69 (2009-01-20 05:29 PM)
Edit Reason: Added Link to VPC2k7SP1
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#191852 - 2009-01-20 06:42 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Benny69]
NTDOC Administrator Offline
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What I don't understand is the seemingly better response for Windows 7 when probably 95% of the code is VISTA yet Vista had such a negative acceptance level. From what I gather from some other sites and a little playing...

1. Less annoyance from UAC possible
2. More hardware supported out of the box
3. Faster for some (some users that have been on Vista for a long time don't all seem to agree about that)

BIG question I have from an Admin point of view is the Rollout. Part of the annoyance for me was the new method chosen where you could not easily image a single image of Vista and deploy it to hundreds of machines, you had to once again play by Microsoft's roll out rules which is why/how programs like Ghost came along in the first place.

If anyone has experience with actually rolling out Vista in any scale of say 10 or more machines please post your experience and method, maybe I just didn't spend enough time reading, reviewing a Vista roll out.
If however I'm correct and it was a hindrance for big shops to roll out Vista, then what is Microsoft doing different for Windows 7 in that area?

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#191859 - 2009-01-21 03:44 AM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Shawn]
Gargoyle Offline
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Well I installed on a VPC today, and crashed the whole system (in the VPC not the whole machine) when I tried to add the VPC additions. Looks like a reload to me. Not a promising start so far (no luck in the roll back to prior settings).

[Update]
After 3 reboots and system self repairing scans, it came back to life. Onward and well... who really knows.
[/Update]


Edited by Gargoyle (2009-01-21 07:35 AM)
Edit Reason: updated
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#191883 - 2009-01-23 12:54 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Gargoyle]
glwday Offline
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@Gargoyle

You need to get the Virtual PC SP1 6.0.192.0 I had the same issue until I found a blog telling me to update. Now everything is fine.

Gary

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#191884 - 2009-01-23 02:39 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: glwday]
Gargoyle Offline
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Thanks for the heads up. I get that later today and start some more testing.
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#191930 - 2009-01-27 09:30 AM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Gargoyle]
Arend_ Moderator Offline
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Doc, WDS does a fine job for me deploying Vista.
Off course you'll need WAIK, but for the rest it works like a charm

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#192620 - 2009-02-26 11:23 PM Re: Testing Windows 7 Beta [Re: Arend_]
Allen Administrator Offline
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Latest news from the Windows 7 Developement Team regarding changes since the beta:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/26/some-changes-since-beta.aspx

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