Build 7000 of Windows 7 Beta 1 was leaked as a torrent on the popular if shady file sharing tracker thepiratebay.org, and users have posted their opinions on the yet-to-be-released operating system using the pirate bay’s comment system. Opinions were mixed, but mostly positive.
The user named al966g, who was “using this OS as I type” said that it “looks like it's OK to me, not too much different than Vista but a few new items.” This user was running Windows 7 on a low-powered computer by today’s standards, a Pentium 4 with 768 MB of RAM. Vista would not have been able to be run on such a computer, as one of the flaws it drew the most flak over, was its intense resource usage and high hardware requirements.
Another denizen of The Pirate Bay, bren72, noted that the beta version of Windows 7 performs well for games, as he was able to mount all his games, which performed excellently on his older hardware. “It looks like Microsoft took note of some of the problems with Vista and made changes,” he said.
Some didn’t share this enthusiasm however, although their gripes were mostly pointed at the largely unchanged interface. One such user, nicknamed stevenrm87, asked “what's the point of this vs. Vista, it looks the same.”
Although Microsoft is not intending to officially release the beta version of Windows 7 to the public until the MSDN developers’ conference in January, the leaked version is already available on a number of famous torrent trackers and other file sharing systems. Nevertheless, the publicity and early feedback Microsoft is getting from this leak mean that it’s actually beneficial to the company.
The developer conference is meant to encourage Microsoft’s partners to begin developing software for Windows 7. This way Redmond hopes to avoid the compatibility problems that have hounded Vista since its January 2007 launch.
Intel released a preproduction version of their WDDM1.1 graphics chipset drivers for Windows 7. The driver, says Intel, is part of an ongoing collaboration with Microsoft, and is designed to “enable the full Windows 7 experience.”
Vista launched in January two years ago and at the time, a great number of hardware manufacturers (Intel among them) did not have drivers ready that were fully compatible. That small oversight was a big part of the bad rap that hounded Vista ever since then.
Microsoft first presented some of Windows 7’s features at the Los Angeles Professional Developers Conference in October, and looks eager to release it as soon as possible. A formal announcement from the company said that the OS won’t ship until the start of 2010, but the beta disk to be released in January does hint at a possible late 2009 final release date.
Microsoft is counting on Windows 7 to atone for Vista’s sins, counting on its increased speed, better resource management and such features as native touch screen support.
