You are currently browsing the daily archive for January 10th, 2009.
Although I normally try to stay as far as possible from Windows stuff (primarily because of the additional work associated with security issues, the need for regular defragging, the slowness of Windows XP which is the only one I’ve tried recently and the fact that you have to shell out for anything other than crap software) I’m interested to take a look at Windows 7.
So, I’m currently downloading the free beta from here and it’s coming down reasonably fast (200 kB/s) given that there are likely to be millions around the world downloading the same thing. However, I should mention that the download errored out after about 15 minutes the first time I tried and this is my second go.
The big problem though will be to get the free product key which allows you to use the beat until August (8 months). Apparently, for this you need to keep a close eye on this page. Nothing like a bit of drama to get the world’s interest up.
Nevertheless, even without the key you can still use the beta for 30 days which is probably way more than I will need. Additionally you can boost this to 120 days simply by running “slmgr -rearm” as explained here.
Edit (Saturday morning — 10-01-2009): Well, you can probably ignore most of the above as I tried 4 times to download the beta but failed as the d/l errored out each time. Seems that MS have postponed the beta giveaway due to “unprecedented demand”. This whole things is starting to look very stage-managed.
Now, there are, of course, “other” sources. Might have to consider one of these although I’m really not that bothered. I’m much more interested to see what the Jaunty Jackalope might bring — and for free!!
