Downloading & Trying Windows 7 Beta Public

[CrONoS]

I've never had any speed issues with Vista. Yes, I have a dual-core machine with 2 gigs of RAM. I've been running Vista since summer 2007, and haven't had to reinstall it since.

Speed issue in gaming was the main reason I switched back to WinXP during fall 2007. There is some games benchmark which compared pre Vista SP1 & post Vista SP1 & WinXP SP3. It seems that SP1, fixed many performance issue.

[Grandpa Troll]

Speed issue in gaming was the main reason I switched back to WinXP during fall 2007. There is some games benchmark which compared pre Vista SP1 & post Vista SP1 & WinXP SP3. It seems that SP1, fixed many performance issue.

I set up a gaming rig to combat this

Of course, top of the line at one month doesnt mean forever....amazing how quick technology advancements become available.

[Asher]

Speed issue in gaming was the main reason I switched back to WinXP during fall 2007. There is some games benchmark which compared pre Vista SP1 & post Vista SP1 & WinXP SP3. It seems that SP1, fixed many performance issue.

It's not even that, it was 99% of the time just immature graphics drivers for Vista from Nvidia and ATI. Now their Vista ones are primary and they backport them to XP, so the Vista ones tend to be the best.

Before the Vista ones were quick ports from XP which didn't work very well.

[FrostyBoy]

I'm curious what games will be like in the future.

I can see the keyboard being integrated into the screen itself, thus eliminating just about everything that makes up a computer, I suppose computers/laptops of the future will just be screens.

[Asher]

I worked for a week on the multi-touch Virtual Earth frontend that you see in that video briefly. My company made the whole thing.

In fact it's a surprisingly huge part of our business now. Militaries and government love it especially, both on MS Surface tables and on large multitouch displays...

[Asher]

Here's a demo video (10MB, MP4 format) of one of our government versions of the Surface front-end for Virtual Earth, from about 1.5 years ago. It's cooler now but the new versions are not public.

http://tinyurl.com/8c8rgy

[FrostyBoy]

Link doesn't work.

I still want to know what games will be like!

[Verto]

When is Windows 7 due out?

[Asher]

Link doesn't work.

Oh well. It was really cool! Guess outsiders can't access it.

As for games, we've developed a multi-touch Surface-based two-user Tetris game that is surprisingly cool.

The Surface SDK actually supports XNA natively for games.

Edit: Video link for the Virtual Earth on Surface demo: http://rapidshare.com/files/182447731/Surface.mp4.html

[Asher]

When is Windows 7 due out?

Late 2009 or early 2010. No firm date.

[Nostromo]

I can see the keyboard being integrated into the screen itself, thus eliminating just about everything that makes up a computer, I suppose computers/laptops of the future will just be screens.

God, I hope not.

[Asher]

I'm sure some will. Most won't.

FWIW, "virtual keyboards" are banned on MS Surface.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Late 2009 or early 2010. No firm date.

Yeah, I think its basically "when its ready".

[Nostromo]

Deep inside the Windows 7 Public Beta: an in-depth tour:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/windows-7-beta.ars

[Imran Siddiqui]

Looks pretty nice.

Also, I noticed from the in-depth tour:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/windows-7-beta.ars/6

ZDNet performed some benchmarks which purport to show Windows 7 being faster than XP SP3 and Vista SP1 (they also show Vista being faster than XP in a number of tests, but of course, no one cares about that...)