Microsoft has made the Release Candidate of Windows 7 freely available to download. It’ll work properly until March 2010 which is very generous. All I’ve heard about Windows 7 has been positive but I won’t be installing it. Why? Because once the Release Candidate expires, I will then be required to perform a “clean” install of a paid-for version. In other words, I’ll need to install not only Windows 7 but also all my applications.
Furthermore, Microsoft recommends that I don’t install it on my main machine. So what’s the point? This might work for a piece of application software you use occasionally but Windows 7 is an operating system! It’s only function is to allow other programs to run. All the programs I work on are on my main PC, so when do I ever get to use Windows 7?
It was, as always, too good to be true.
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I just installed Win7 RC2 on my D drive to play with.. then you can boot between XP/Vista on C and the new one.
Hi Pete,
the issue for me is that an operating system is there to run applications so, in order to test it, I’d need to install my applications on Windows 7 and then, when the RC expires, remove and reinstall them.
Kevin
Kevin – you have a very good point. Understandably, most programs only install once hence having “used up the first install” on the beta version of Windows 7, then it’s not always possible to re-install. Had the same problem when playing around with virtual machines.
Roger
Again, that’s not quite what I mean. For example, I use Adobe CS4 Web Suite. This takes hours to install and can only be used on one machine. In order to evaluate Win7, I need to be using it day to day and therefore need to install CS4 on it. The problem is that when it expires, I then have to completely wipe that machine (virtual or otherwise), install the shrink-wrap version of Win7 and then reinstall CS4, Flex Builder, Office etc etc etc.
What I would like is to be able to simply buy a licence key for Win7 or “upgrade” my RC edition with the real one when released. Otherwise I face having to spend many hours reinstalling all my software and getting my environment right again once the shrinkwrap version has been installed.
I’m not prepared to waste my time doing that: I’ll wait until I next change PCs and am forced to do a reinstall in any case.
Hi Kevin,
you could try following the steps in the article here: http://windows7news.com/2009/04/27/upgrading-from-windows-7-rc-to-final/
I found it after searching for an answer to the same question. It was quite hard to find at the time.
As always, there is no guarantee that this will work but I will give it a shot after I back up all my program settings.
I was quite surprised to hear that Apple have a solution to the problem of reinstalling apps though. I don’t have a MAC but a photographer friend does. He’s just bought a new one to replace his current system.
He setup the new MAC, pointed it at the current machine and it moved his applications across for him. He said it took a good few hours but it saved him the hassle.
Do you know any way of doing this in Windows? I’ve not heard of the like.
Cheers,
Paul