Week 12

At the end of July Microsoft confirmed that the rumors we had been hearing for some time that a Family Pack was in the works for Windows 7 were correct. Microsoft has now released some additional details and pricing.



Windows 7 Family Pack consists of Windows 7 Home Premium for installation on up to 3 PCs. Microsoft announced that the Family Pack will be available starting on October 22nd "until supplies last here in the US and other select markets." In the US, the price for the Windows 7 Family Pack will be $149.99 for 3 Windows 7 Home Premium licenses.With the first beta of Windows 7 available to the general public to download, I will take you through an overview of Windows 7. While this beta build has only been available for testers for a few weeks, it had already leaked onto the Internet at the end of December when Microsoft (mistakenly?) put this build (build 7000) on MSDN and TechNet for a few hours. Some lucky ones got to download it, and (one or more people) decided to share it via file-shares.



Now that the beta has been officially released by Microsoft, let's take a look at it. The first thing you'll notice is that this build hasn't changed much in comparison to the M3 (build 6801) build released last October. That is, if you (like almost anybody else) enabled all the hidden M3 features using Rafael Rivera's "Blue Badge" tool.



This Windows 7 Beta is anything like a previous windows beta. It's feature complete, and looks and feels more like a Release Candidate (RC) build than a beta. We'll see over the next few weeks how the public will receive this build, when it will be put through its paces on thousands of different hardware/software configurations.



Setup



Windows 7 setup routine looks a lot like Vista's routine, and although Vista's routine was a huge improvement over Windows XP's setup routine, Windows 7 managed to further improve upon it, with fewer steps before the install begins.





The post-setup phase (configuration phase) includes one or two extra screens, depending on the presence of a wireless network. If a wireless network is detected, Windows 7 will prompt you for a wireless network to join; if not you will get the new Homegroup setup.






Windows 7 installed in around 30 minutes on my test machines.




1
digg
digg


Next Page

Give your comments on this article. E-mail This Page


Last Updated: February




Now that is a great saving, but there's a catch. I have included the 'problematic' words in Microsoft announcement above in quotation marks; Microsoft is saying it will be a limited offer "while supplies last." Microsoft has so far declined to comment on this.



It is also not clear in which markets the Family Pack will be offered, but it looks to be quite restricted too. About the only information available right now is that we won't see a Family Pack offer in Europe until 2010.


0
diggs
digg

Give your comments on this article. E-mail This Page