Tag Archives | Microsoft Windows 7

Paul Thurrott had it right: Microsoft has decided to lift the three-apps-at-a-time limitation from Windows 7 Starter Edition, the low-cost, low-end version of the OS which will likely show up on a lot of netbooks beginning this fall.

The company announced the change in plans at the Windows 7 Team Blog, in a post that also detailed remaining limitations of Starter Edition, among them its lack of Aero effects, custom wallpaper (!),  Taskbar previews, Fast User Switching, Media Center features, and DVD playback. It also tries to dissuade folks from associating Starter Edition and netbooks too closely:

As we continue to say since we announced the Windows 7 editions in February, all editions of Windows 7 have been optimized to run on the broadest range of hardware ranging from small notebook PCs all the way up to high end gaming machines. Windows 7 Starter should not be considered “the netbook SKU” as most machines in this category can run any edition of Windows 7. Many of our beta users have installed Windows 7 Ultimate on their small notebook PCs and have given us very positive feedback on their experience.

The post’s right that netbooks can run beefier versions of Windows 7–actually, I’m typing these very words on an Asus Eee PC 1000HE that’s working just fine with Windows 7 Ultimate. But  it remains to be seen just  how many netbooks will ship with anything other other than Starter given the price competition in the category (which is fierce) and the additional cost to bundle higher-end versions of Windows (which will be substantial). Starter Edition exists only because Microsoft would otherwise have to cede the low-end netbook market to Linux; it’s a version of Windows that Microsoft is releasing only because it doesn’t have much choice.

So if you’re thinking about buying a Windows 7 netbook, would you opt for Starter, or would you be willing to pay extra bucks for Windows 7 Home Premium or another more full-featured edition?

At this point, anything else would have been a heckuva surprise, but now it’s formal: At its Tech Ed conference today, Microsoft announced that it plans to ship Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2) in time for the holidays. Until now, the company had just been saying that it planned to get Win 7 out within three years of Vista’s release, which could have left it arriving in early 2010.

I’m not at Tech Ed, but Microsoft’s press release doesn’t seem to define what it means by the holiday season. The company is presumably confident that it can get Windows 7 onto new PCs and into stores by late November. But with the Windows 7 Release Candidate seemingly in good shape and no further major pre-release versions planned, you don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to speculate that Microsoft really thinks it can get the OS out in time for students heading off to college this fall to buy Windows 7 laptops, and that it’s saving that news to spring on us later.

If Windows 7 does indeed ship months before Microsoft’s self-imposed deadline, it’ll be good news–assuming, of course, that the version that ships is robust, and well-supported by applications and devices. It’s going to feel odd being deprived of one of the tech world’s most reliable guffaws, though: the notion that Windows. Always. Ships. Late.

Actually, it’s been running quite well on my test machines for a pre-release operating system, but I have encountered a couple of instances in which it seemed to be fussy about what folder I installed an application into. Now it’s looking like I may have run into a major bug. Ed Bott has the news:

Yesterday, Microsoft published Knowledge Base article 970789, which provides details of a problem that affects the 32-bit (x86) English-language version of Windows 7 build 7100. The problem, in short, is that the installer incorrectly sets access control lists (ACLs) on the root of the system drive.

If you’re contemplating trying out the Windows 7 Release Candidate but are worried about system requirements and compatibility issues, check out the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor that Microsoft released in beta form today. It scans Windows XP and Windows Vista machines and responds with a report about whether their system specs are up to running Windows 7, along with whether any drivers or applications are likely to cause trouble. It also alerts Windows XP users to the fact that they can’t install 7 on top of XP and will have to do a fresh install.

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It’s not all that often that the words “Windows” and “ahead of schedule” can be used in the same sentence, but here we go: As Cnet’s Ina Fried is reporting, Microsoft. which said it was going to make the Windows 7 Release Candidate available for download tomorrow, opened up the floodgates tonight, ahead of schedule. Here’s the download page. I’ll be posting a detailed guide soon, but here’s the short story: I’ve been using the Release Candidate for a few days and it’s gone–well, not perfectly, but really well. Even though Windows 7’s final version isn’t due for months, I hope and expect that the Release Candidate is the version of Windows I’ll turn to most often from here on out.

If you’re intrigued enough by the Release Candidate to consider trying it, I say go for it–as long as you can install it in its own partition, rather than overwriting a working copy of Windows Vista. (Unless you’re really anxious, though, waiting a day or two’s not a bad idea, given Microsoft’s history of struggling to keep up with the initial throngs of crazed downloaders.)

If you spend time with the RC, please let us know what you think. And stay tuned for more thoughts from me.