News - Windows 7 on the fast track, release candidate due in April?

[HEXUS]

It's far from official, but rumours suggest Microsoft is on track to deliver a Windows 7 release candidate on April 10.

Read more.

[3dcandy]

It appears that Microsoft are woried at their own eroding cash cow that is Windows. How it must hurt that the only hardware that appears to be selling well has to run on XP Home because Vista is such a dog....so get Windows 7 out sharpish so the others (Linux) don't gain at your expense. However, in my rough and ready tests, Windows 7 build 7000 beta, really does perform much better than Vista in the majority of cases. This laptop I'm on now is much smoother and responsive, driver issues apart, and a much better and useful tool now it's running 7. I initially thought about going back to xp, but may shell out for a retail copy of 7, something I wouldn't dare to do with Vista!

[scaryjim]

I hope so. I use Windows 7 on my main desktop at home, and I've never enjoyed using Windows as much. Don't get me wrong, I like XP, and I think it'll still be used for a long time as you really can run it on minimal software (P3 @ 550MHz and 256MB SDR in our meeting room at work!), but Windows 7 is somewhat more intuitive and user friendly. My only worry about it is going to be the price - retail packages are *bound* to be expensive enough to put me off buying a copy...

[Anosh]

Win7 is Vista.

After all the mess and the restart of the development
of Vista they rushed the OS instead fine tuning it.

Win7 is the fine tuning.

I'm running Vista on 6GB & i7 and it's running more stable and faster than XP ever did.

[scaryjim]

I'm running Vista on 6GB & i7 and it's running more stable and faster than XP ever did.

Have you run XP on your 6GB i7? And done any meaningful benchmarks?

Being able to run smoothly on bleeding edge hardware isn't the job of an operating system. It should run smoothly on the lowest spec hardware it is still economically viable to make: currently a 1.6GHZ single core processor and 1GB RAM. Besides, the improvements in Windows 7 aren't just about stability and performance, it's also a much better OS to use than Vista. Simple fact is, I used Vista both at home and at work and hated every minute of it - I no longer have Vista on any computer I use. I am now using Windows 7 at home, and will be sad when Microsoft ask me to pay up at the end of my beta, because I really want to own a copy but I'm sure it'll be more expensive than I'm willing to pay.

Windows 7 is only as much Vista as XP was 2000. Technologically it's not that much different, but the vast majority of users don't care about that. And I can guarantee it'll be a much greater commercial success than Vista, because people will enjoy using it. And that's the ultimate yardstick...

[jim]

I have no intention of buying any more copies of Vista, so the sooner Windows 7 is out the better as far as I'm concerned. Nonetheless, if they want to iron out bugs, then that's great, especially since it sounds pretty good already.

[transylvanic]

I'm running Vista on 6GB & i7 and it's running more stable and faster than XP ever did.

XP is not unstable, you blasphemer!

I'm happy to see MS working to an aggressive timetable. It would seem that even the most hardcore monopoly can be made to break a sweat when it screws up.

[dangel]

XP is not unstable, you blasphemer! .

Bloody well is.

Well, once you start adding drivers to the free-for-all usb stack and in kernel mode like there's no tomorrow.

I'll be grabbing the RC build from MSDN (i'm currently running the beta full time).

[miniyazz]

I never noticed how much slower XP is at handling large files (6GB+) than Vista until temporarily dual-booting for a few weeks. Due to XP being 32-bit OS vs 64, or just Vista being better at it?
Anyway, I'm on Win7 now and if they can price it at 'Ultimate Steal' prices, it'd be great for students/those on a budget!

[JackUK]

Have you run XP on your 6GB i7? And done any meaningful benchmarks?

Being able to run smoothly on bleeding edge hardware isn't the job of an operating system. It should run smoothly on the lowest spec hardware it is still economically viable to make: currently a 1.6GHZ single core processor and 1GB RAM.

I agree that you shouldnt need the latest and greatest hardware to run an operating system but ram is so cheap these days, getting two sticks of 1GB is really not that expensive, cheaper than the operating system itself! IMHO operating systems need to be treated by the companies that make them like computer games and provide more easily accessable options to disable functionality to provide better general performance, not everyone wants things like prefetching or indexing running or to have to search around to figure out how to disable them. Vista (like XP) is not perfect but its a step forwards and hopefully gave MS a better idea of what consumers want. Im looking forward to Windows 7 and maybe seeing a greater step

[just_laze]

Have you run XP on your 6GB i7? And done any meaningful benchmarks?6

Without entering the debate on how well Vista does, or doesn't run - benchmarks in general are meaningless, they rarely represent real world usage which is what's important. Use the operating system, if it feels snappy be happy.

laze

[crossy]

Well I wish MS all the best with this - the reviews on W7 so far look pretty favourable (hype?) and I could really do with an OS update for my XP gaming system.

And if anyone says "Oooh why haven't you upgraded to Vista ..." my answer is "because it's crap!". Sheesh, I can fire up my (dual-core 2.16GHz) laptop with Ubuntu on it, and launch and log into an XP VM in the time it takes the one Vista system (single core 1.8GHz) in the house takes to boot. And I despise the lack of speed when it finally does get it's s**t together...

I'm running Vista on 6GB & i7 and it's running more stable and faster than XP ever did.

I'm pleased for you. Don't really want to spoil it by pointing out that I'd damn well expect any even slightly non-crap OS to run reasonably on that kind of resource spec. Heck, I've got business customers that are using 'smaller' systems than that for some major work.

[3dcandy]

On my test bed system, snappy comes in this order (only windows compared)
2000, W7, XP, Vista
Not seperated into 32-bit and/or 64-bit..just a general opinion. 64-bit XP would be fine if I could get the drivers stable....32-bit rock solid, W7 solid now I changed AV program, Vista crashes if you look at it wrong ( Vista, the wimp of O/S's)

[kakkou]

I'm looking forward to Windows 7, been a long time user of XP. How is Wndows 7 compared to Vista?

[Gooner5]

So will the pricing structure of Windows 7 be similar to Vista's pricing structure when it is finally released?

[transylvanic]

So will the pricing structure of Windows 7 be similar to Vista's pricing structure when it is finally released?

No way of knowing that until closer to release. Though I suspect they will cut down on the BS stratification and might offer fewer options for the sake of having a clearer marketplace. Then again, that would be the sensible thing to do, which almost guarantees it won't happen.