Hey all, just thought I would pass along the following link which will allow you to obtain a legal and working beta of the upcoming OS. I believe the keys the website generates for you last for 120 days or so?

Anyway here's the link for both 32 and 64 bit. You might have to refresh a couple times, and I've read signing in to your passport account helps.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/eval ... 53205.aspx

Sweet got it downloading now.

Had troubles clicking the download link in Firefox (it just refreshes page) so I used IE, and it sent to flashgot with the wrong filename (default.aspx) but it's still the correct filesize.

Does anyone have the correct filename for the download so I can rename once it completes?

7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso

that's the file name. but really, it doesn't matter what you call it as long as you use the .iso file extention.

Got a copy mailed to me actually.

Haven't tried it yet. So if someone gets to me im sure ill read some comments.

Thanks MD, I wanted to make sure I had the right filename from the get-go. Installing tomorrow.

been running for a couple hours on my laptop now. and i figured i'd share some of my initial thoughts.

boot time is definitely faster than vista. nothing to write home about, but it is better.

total install size is about 3GB smaller than vista business. can't go wrong with that

file and folder permissions are a little screwy. many folders have TrustedInstaller as the owner and the Administrator group only has read permissions on those folders and all files and subfolders within as well. you can take control of the folders in question and all subfolders and their contents, but the read only access seems to be only changable on a file by file basis which gets extremely annoying (unless i'v missed something).

Gadgets, they don't work in this build if you have UAC disabled. there is a workaround that lets you use the Vista sidebar, which suits me fine anyway.

USB performance is WAY up. under vista i could only write to my external hard drives at about 18MB/s. with windows 7 that has increased to 29MB/s.

Total system resource usage is about the same as in vista. However, it feels and acts much faster for using the same amount of system resources. some benching later may give me a better idea.

Intel's video drivers will not install due to an "incompatible operating system". however, things like network card, audio drivers, and touchpad work just fine.

The interface as a whole will take some getting used to. some small things are bothering me, but there's likely fixes for them or possibly will be changed for the final version.

more thoughts may follow.

EDIT: more thoughts

HDTach, couldn't coax it into working. it takes compatibility mode under vista, so i'm not surprised it doesn't work in 7.

Networking. Under windows vista transfers between my desktop (802.11N 300mbps) and my laptop (802.11G 54mbps) would go about 1.75MB/s. Under Windows 7 that speed has increased to 2.25MB/s.

Network speed was actually my biggest beef with Vista. Good to see it's changing.

I tried it out last week and the first time I started the install it crapped out. So in order to reinstall it I had to format the drive completely again.

After it installed fine I haven't touched it since.

Im really enjoying it so far, it's basically how vista should of been, i will actually purchase a copy on final release

As much as I was "mildly-ok" with Vista I really think Windows 7 should be a free upgrade to people who paid for Vista. It won't happen; but that doesn't mean it isn't what Microsoft should be doing.

Theres a rumor going around that it screws up all MP3's you have on your system

Yet another reason to hoard lossless audio .

i have my music and videos backed up to 3 drives, because i lost it all before not once, but twice

I have my whole music collection backed up in 4 "out-of-office" remote locations hehe.

i'll put this to the test and report back in a little bit.

EDIT:

copied my music collection to my laptop. winamp and WMP played all my songs just fine.

some people may have trouble with the new Library setup though. and that may be trying to remove songs from the Library folder which deletes the files from your computer.

another possibility is that any creative drivers installed may be having issues with playback just as my Audigy4 did when vista first came out.

however, as far as i can tell, any myths about Windows 7 messing up mp3s are busted.

EDIT again:
upon the conclusion of testing i ran windows update and found an interesting update available.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961367