Test install – Windows 7 Beta
Microsoft struggled to deal with the demand for their Windows 7 Beta release. So much so that the download was not available on the promised date. The availability of the beta software has been extended for two weeks and seems no longer to be restricted to the first 2.5 million applications. The shift of the download date meant I could take advantage of a no-payment download option. This is particularly useful for large files…
Getting the rather large (2.24GB) ISO for the 32-bit version down the first time was unsuccessful for some or other reason. I attempted to get the software installed in a VM and subsequently test-booted on nx8220 only to be greeted by the following error
Somehow, the ISO image had been corrupted, possibly by one or more restarts of the download. For good measure, I started the download of both 32-bit and 64-bit ISO‘s once again. Mercifully, both completed in a reasonable two hour period. This time the 32-bit image seemed to be error free, confirmed by the fact that VMWare recognized the ISO image as a Windows Vista installation medium.
The fact that the download has been extended to any number of interested hackers was confirmed by the new issue of a serial key each time I attempted the download. I have a few spare, just in case 
The installation in the VM was absolutely painless. VMWare suggests using the quick installer, which presents the opportunity of entering user name, password and serial key into a dialog box for the Windows installer to utilize. There was no other information required by the installation program as it proceeded to copy and uncompress files, then install and reboot a few times.
It all looks very much like Vista, from the look and feel of the dialog boxes to the logon screen that is presented once Windows 7 has rebuilt the registry and checked the performance of the graphics card it will be relying on.
The desktop is attractive and clutter-free and the Start menu is still where one expects to find it. On the whole, no major changes at all. The well-known Vista gadgets may be dragged to the desktop and Internet Explorer 8 is a standard part of the installation.
Though I ran the installation and initial test in a VM on G2S performance seemed brisk and rather snappy. This is one of the promises the Microsoft development team has made: no huge resource requirements and the ability to run on hardware that has not been upgraded to the max. I’ll be trying the installation on a two-year old notebook sometime this week to see how well that hardware copes with Windows 7 – Vista was a no-go for that platform.
Here’s another screenshot showing the new calculator and Explorer window.
A clever change is the show desktop button – it has moved all the way to the far right of the task bar, next to the time and date display. Network connectivity is automatically detected at startup and the network wizard requests how the network is to be set up. This also enables media to be shared automatically on a home network, for example. Once I have the OS installed on a dedicated system, I’ll try out Microsoft Office and a few other applications to give a better appraisal of its functionality, reliability and performance. For now, I like what I see, especially the apparent performance improvements.
