Windows 7 Beta 1 Hitting January 13

Windows 7 appears to be advancing at a noticeable pace, with the first beta release hitting developer hands in just little over a month.

Bob Familiar noted on his blog that attendees of upcoming MSDN conferences will receive a Windows 7 Beta DVD when it is available. Keith Combs from Technet further clarified this point saying that attendees of the January 13 events in Chicago and Minneapolis will be able to pick up the DVDs at the event itself.

The official MSDN Developer Conference page verifies the upcoming release of the beta, stating, “All attendees will receive a Windows 7 Beta DVD. If the Windows 7 Beta is not available at the time of the event, the DVD will be shipped to attendees when it becomes available.”

It looks like Microsoft is aiming to erase the talk of Vista as soon as possible. Windows 7 is slated to ship in time for holiday 2009.

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Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.

32 Comments Comment from the forums

eklipz330

my friend ran this flawlessly on a computer with p3 @ 1.6ghz w/ 512mb ram.. he hates all OS's equally, but this is the first OS he's gonna get on opening day... AND IM GOING WITH HIM
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blackwidow_rsa

pretty negative guy then. and great that you ran a yet unfinished os on 512mb, nearly no pcs ship with that amount anymore
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Tindytim

BlackWidow_rsapretty negative guy then. and great that you ran a yet unfinished os on 512mb, nearly no pcs ship with that amount anymoreIt does extremely well. Pretty damn stable even though it's not the full OS.
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justsomeone

TindytimIt does extremely well. Pretty damn stable even though it's not the full OS.
It's the full version that concerns me. Will it behave as well when it puts on the pounds?
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prodigy22

What concerns me is driver support. Will this create just more sound driver support issues for the team at creative? and inefficient gaming performance under DX10? cause it seems like its the same vista core except less resources and better memory utilization
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liemfukliang

I have try the build 6801, and this is the best os I ever used.
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eddieroolz

I agree, I've been using only Build 6801 for the past three weeks and it is miles more refined than Vista, which I think was already great. I can't wait for it become a full-fledged OS.

I really want the DVD. Just for commemorative purposes. Too bad it's in Chicago...
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You've got to be kidding??? It's crashed on me 3 times in 1 hour. Stable?

Try looking at the Event Viewer and switch quickly between various event log events, MMC crashes big time. Ugh this is horrible? What do you folks do that have a build of Windows 7??? Nothing? OMG, just push it a little and it tumbles down and not very gracefully either.

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jaragon13

I suspect an apple fanboy...
Anyways,I'll probably just end up pirating the beta,since microsoft doesn't want to give meany of the betas... :)
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Tindytim

V8VENOMYou've got to be kidding??? It's crashed on me 3 times in 1 hour. Stable?Try looking at the Event Viewer and switch quickly between various event log events, MMC crashes big time. Ugh this is horrible? What do you folks do that have a build of Windows 7??? Nothing? OMG, just push it a little and it tumbles down and not very gracefully either.What Build were you using? Build 6801 is quite stable.

justsomeoneIt's the full version that concerns me. Will it behave as well when it puts on the pounds?I think Microsoft has learned a few lessons with Vista that they won't easily forget. I remember the Vista betas, and those were pretty bad. The fact that I can use something that isn't even a Beta, as a stable OS gives me quite a bit of hope for the final product.
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