Windows 7 Beta to RC Guidance

THIS IS NOT AN ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT WHEN THE RC WILL BE AVAILABLE!

Many people have been running the beta of Windows 7 for a while now, and we have gotten some great feedback. I have been running weekly internal builds since build 7000 went public, and it gets better every time. I, personally, have been loving my experience with Win7.

At some point in the future, we will be releasing a Release Candidate (RC) for Windows 7. Many of you with Windows 7 Beta installed will be sorely tempted to just upgrade to the RC. I can understand why, as I do build-to-build upgrades on my machines every week. It saves all that setting up, installing, and what not that you have to do to take a machine from bare metal to something that is productive for you.

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PLEASE, use Windows Easy Transfer, save off your files, and then do a fresh install. We ask you do this mainly so we can test a real world scenario. You CAN do a build-to-build upgrade, but that is not a scenario we are trying to test, and the point of an RC is to get a broad sense of what is going on in the “REAL WORLD.(TM)”

Am I the only one that thinks ‘type mismatch’ from my old Apple IIe basic days when I see the trademark symbol?

When I do build-to-build, it takes a few hours as the files and settings are migrated, so an upgrade doesn’t save you all that much time from a fresh install. When I have been doing fresh installs (at least one of my machines per new build), I have been using Live mesh to do all of the heavy lifting. Here is what I do:

- Install OS

- Join Domain

- Install Office 2007 and VSTS 2008

- Install Live Mesh

- Let is sync for a while

- Install little tools (Live Essentials, ISO mounter, and FoxIt Reader are the first)

- Install twitter client. :)

Another great path we would like you to try is to upgrade from an existing Windows Vista machine. Please report issues via the connect.Microsoft.com site. This allows us to channel the feedback to the correct team, and allows you to see what other people are reporting.

Copy the contents of the ISO to a flash drive, and install off of that. It’s super fast.

A few notes that all of your should already know:

- Don’t run BETA software on any machine that is important to your productivity.

- Don’t do an upgrade on a machine before you have backed up the important data.

To get the scoop on this whole scenario, and the instructions for doing a build-to-build upgrade, check out http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/07/delivering-a-quality-upgrade-experience.aspx.

PS. The good news is that it will contain IE8RTM and be able to run the Azure SDK.

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