Windows 7 RCs Shut Down To Force Updates 414
nk497 writes "The release candidate for Microsoft Windows 7 will expire June 2010, and the software giant will let users know they need to pay to upgrade by shutting down the system every two hours for three months. According to Microsoft: "The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you'll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010. You'll also need to install the programs and data that you want to use.""
Crackfix please (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
3... 2... 1....
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Funny)
about 4 seconds... 3... 2... 1....
Hurry! It's shutting me down!
Hurray! (Score:5, Funny)
about 4 seconds...
3... 2... 1....
Hurray! It's shutting me down!
Fixed that for you.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Funny)
*ducks*
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I can see it now. The New Mac vs. PC commercials.
Hi, I'm a Mac. I automatically back myself up every 2 hours.
Hi, I'm a PC. I reboot myself every 2 hours to give you the best performance that you deserve!
Or another MS commercial:
Windows 7 - The most stable Windows yet. Runs for 2 hours without shutting down! And to further your productivity, we've automated the shutdown to help you drive productivity and grow your business!
Re:Crackfix please (Score:4, Insightful)
Who wants to use the RC version of Windows 7 forever? The RTM version will be released and cracked long before March 2010.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:4, Funny)
When I installed Vista on a used laptop it didn't recognize the Vista CD Key on the laptop and wouldn't let me log in to the system. Only thing it would display is "YOUR KEY IS INVALID. PLEASE ENTER A VALID KEY OR CALL... (etc)". Safe mode didn't work either.
I ended up calling the manufacture and paying $30 for restore DVDs, but it put the laptop completely out of commission for a week.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Informative)
When I installed Vista on a used laptop it didn't recognize the Vista CD Key on the laptop and wouldn't let me log in to the system. Only thing it would display is "YOUR KEY IS INVALID. PLEASE ENTER A VALID KEY OR CALL... (etc)". Safe mode didn't work either.
First thought that came to mind is that you might've been using a Retail disk for an OEM install. While I've seen OEM disks from different PC makers work on other brands, I've yet to see a Retail version work with an OEM serial number.
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I've had to call MS before since a client reloaded XP by himself and couldn't get past the key part. Was very simple - just had to verify with the person on the other end that the key wasn't in use more than once, then they activated it (challenge/response I think in XP) - this could have worked for you as well. Probably only 20 minutes out of my day (and billable...)
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Not long. the beta had cracks that disabled the timeout floating on TPB for a month now. This one will be dead in short order as well.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Insightful)
Hence the crippling.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:4, Insightful)
Generally, I find it frustrating that I can't save and have to stop at the good part, but if the game is good, I then buy it.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it's a silly restriction for game demos if you can't save. It's reasonable that you can't load (after all, it's a demo), but is there any reason why you shouldn't be allowed to continue a game on the full version after you started it on the demo version?
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not "free as in beer." It's "free as in drugs" as in "the first hit is always free."
Re:Crackfix please (Score:4, Funny)
It's not "free as in beer." It's "free as in drugs" as in "the first hit is always free."
Yeah it's the same with sex, and then you get married.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure there's an anatomical comment in there, but I'm not gonna go there...
Actually, after escaping from ten years of purgatory, I guess I already did. ;)
You're not alone (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure there's an anatomical comment in there, but I'm not gonna go there...
Neither are the rest of us /.ers :(
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's funny is that somebody down-modded my post (It quickly went back up to 5 again). I'm assuming the down-modder was one of those happily married people that you hear about on TV.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:4, Funny)
What's funny is that somebody down-modded my post (It quickly went back up to 5 again). I'm assuming the down-modder was one of those happily married people that you hear about on TV.
Or maybe it's just your wife...
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Funny)
What planet are you from?
With sex, it's "pay out the nose for it one way or another", then you get married, and it becomes "not at any price except for purposes of procreation and then you better be able to perform on-demand at the whim of the Fertility Gods as intimated by the Basal Thermometer Oracle and meanwhile all you can think of is a crying infant and the fact that you wore tight jeans yesterday and whether you remembered to backup your systems and then you have to go see a urologist because of your 'performance issues'".
Or so I've heard.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there is another side to that story: my wife and I are in our mid 40s. She was on the pill for most of the 25 years we have been together, and our sex life declined along the lines of the jar-of-beans statistic commonly mentioned.
Since my wife stopped taking the pill (I guess gambling that if an unwanted pregnancy were to happen, there have already been multiple opportunities for such a mishap), the boot is now on the other foot (so to speak), the rampant horny hormones have taken hold, and I'm now the one who has to struggle to keep up.
You young 'uns might think there are worse ways to go than being balled to death, but there are times when I am more then happy just to sit in an armchair reading a novel, thank you very much.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:4, Insightful)
Beer is a drug. And beer, like other drugs, are often shared freely by friends. "Pushers" looking to get you hooked are a fabrication by the drug warriors.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes and no.
Free, or discount-rate, samples are a useful marketing tool for drug dealers as well as other "legitimate" businesses. Since so many of the drugs in question are addictive, there is an element of truth to pushers 'getting people hooked'.
It's not a myth created by the "drug warriors".
Not all drug dealers fit into this stereotype, but some definitely do. It's a business; identifying your potential markets, increasing the size of those markets, and increasing your penetration into those markets are all things done by successful dealers, although they may not refer to them in those terms. Another important strategy is steering customers to your highest-margin products; this is even better when they are adding those products on top of existing products, instead of replacing the other products. "Pushing" drugs and offering free samples are a great way to do all of these things.
If you haven't personally experienced these things, well, that's probably a measure of your exposure. Or it's a measure of how mature the market is where you are; a mature market doesn't require as much development.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Insightful)
Not disagreeing with you at all--but do you recognize that you are putting crack dealers on the same level as wineries? Many addictive drug dealers have used these techniques for years--The creators of cigarettes, wine and beer have often given their drugs away to try to create new addicts--in fact if I'm not mistaken, cigarettes were given to the military as part of rations WWII (and WWI?).
Makes you think--I mean the cigarette manufactures are more aggressive in that way than dealers of every other drug (possibly even including alcohol) combined and they have killed many more people and cost society much more...
I don't know where I'm going with this, but there is a point to be made there somewhere.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:4, Insightful)
Free, or discount-rate, samples are a useful marketing tool for drug dealers as well as other "legitimate" businesses
Never, in 15 years of buying and using drugs have I ever met a dealer who marketed. They don't need to, the demand is high enough that the customers will find you. Occasionally a sample is provided to prove the quality of the stock, but in no way does that lead to someone getting hooked.
Since so many of the drugs in question are addictive, there is an element of truth to pushers 'getting people hooked'.
Not really. No one gets hooked to anything after one free sample.
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You sure about that? Are you talking about retailers where they know the people will come to them? Perhaps you're unaware that those aren't the only kind of dealers around. Another question -- have you ever been in an area with an oversupply of drugs? It's amazing what an astute dealer will do to ma
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the RC1 does work, fully uncrippled, until March of 2010.
Geez. Microsoft releases a release candidate of their next major OS and lets everyone on earth use it for free for 10 months..... and people still complain because it begins to nag the user after 10 months.
Only on Slashdot.
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Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would people hate Microsoft for making available a free release candidate of their new OS that can be used with no restriction for the next 11 months?
At that point users of the release candidate can either pay for a license or reinstall their old OS.
This isn't some nefarious move by Microsoft it is just the end of the evaluation period of the release candidate.
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How many "data files" will it make that are Windows 7 only, making return to XP impossible?
Makes no difference I suppose. It's pretty much a given that anybody who installs this and uses it for a year is a die-hard Windows fan who's not going back anyway.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Informative)
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Also... wanting to try the new mainstream OS makes me a diehard Windows fan?
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Do you just apply the new license or do you need to reinstall?
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Good question. Some MS products let you change the license number, if you first enter an invalid one (like Server 2008; presumably that feature disappears after it's activated.) So it's definitely technically possible for them to do it.
I doubt they will, though-- remember you're supposed to only be installing this Windows 7 release on *test* machines, not live machines. Therefore, you should fully expect to have to lose everything on it when you upgrade to the release version of Windows 7. It would be nice
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Once the Win7 install is up and running, just run the "easy transfer tool", select the backup file that was created, and hit "Go" again. Worked very well.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Funny)
You really must be new around here... ;-)
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Funny)
I'm just excited to hear that Microsoft is giving out free copies of their OS so that people who write malware won't have to buy a copy to port their software to the new platform.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:4, Funny)
Pssh, Microsoft takes backward compatibility very seriously. For instance, the virus on this disk I have in my USB floppy drive works ju
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Apparently it can hit the submit button and is very infecti
what is bad about this (Score:2, Insightful)
What is bad about this is the way MS forces you to upgrade - by erasing the disk, along with the OS and ALL of your data, then installing a licensed copy and reinstalling all of your apps and then the data. What could be more inconvenient? What could waste more time? What could be more stupid?
Why not just have a menu item to click on to buy a valid license key with a credit card - LIKE EVERY OTHER NORMAL VENDOR DOES!
I just activated a copy of Photoshop Express this way, it's a convenient, easy $90 for Ado
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Doesn't anyone at Microsoft have a triple digit IQ?
There are thousands, just none in management. Like most companies.
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This is slashdot. MS can NEVER be seen as anything but evil here.
You're lying. Slashdot frequently has pro-M$ posts. M$ marketers and M$ marketing victims appear to have their very own reality distortion field and can't cope with a website that has any alternative points of view at all.
When websites like microsoft.com [microsoft.com] or Paul Thurott [winsupersite.com] are fair and balanced then you might have a point. Until then any so-called bias by slashdot website contributers is just balancing out a tiny fraction of the incredible volu
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Not to mention that because this is an OPEN beta, Microsoft would have to give every single person who ever "beta-tested" (read: "downloaded") the software a free copy.
If I get chosen for the Starcraft beta test, I'll not
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's their software. When you installed it, you agreed to their licensing terms.
You don't like the terms, don't install the software.
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Because while Microsoft has every right to disable their software, they have NO LEGAL RIGHT to turn my computer on or off.
Except disabling their software results in your computer shutting off - you cant run your hardware without it. Of course they could change things to have the OS shut down and display that stupid 'it is now safe to turn off your hardware' message so you can leave your useless hardware powered on.
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From ripping DVD's to audio CD's, Vista has prevented me from doing nothing. If you hvae legitimate problems with the OS, fine, but your statement there is just a bunch of FUD.
Re:Crackfix please (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy is nothing more than selfish humans leeching other people's work and not wanting to lose the free ride.
Modern copyright law is nothing more than selfish and greedy middlemen not wanting to lose their free ride.
Re:Better yet: (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, so the OS initiating a shutdown (one of the OS's functions) after it passes a clearly defined date, in accordance with the licensing terms you agreed to on an OS you are getting for free to use for testing purposes is illegal? MS has been perfectly clear from the start what this release is for. They would be fully within their rights to have the os stop functioning completely after the date. The only way they would be responsible for damages is if it intentionally damaged the hardware in some way. Heck, if it accidentally destroys the hardware, they are still in the clear because they made it perfectly clear this was a no guarantees testing purposes build.
This is the ultimate non-story that makes the community look bad because it's pointless anti-ms rabble rousing instead of actual legitimate criticism.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You may want to get outside and tone the nerd-rage down some.
Um... (Score:5, Funny)
I Just changed my system clock to see what would happ
Re:Um... (Score:5, Funny)
I Just changed my system clock to see what would happ
Well? What happened? You stopped in the middle of typing like you were talking about Candlejack or somethi
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You're Surprised at No Take Backs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Has Microsoft gone mental?
What is totally mental, and I mean running around the supermarket without your pants on shouting "where is the mustard" mad ...
Here is what Mental Microsoft has to say on the matter
I get it, you learned a new word: mental. Please, try to use it in moderation and only when discussing things with your too cool for school third grade friends.
Really, you sound surprised. Didn't they warn us about this anyway? That's why the general populace was not supposed to install this. For savvy users with their old image on a backup drive it's a minor inconvenience.
Can one automagically revert to the legal Windows (if any) they had installed before they installed Windows 7? Of course not, this would make sense. And provide an easy way out of migration. For those who need an ill formed & flawed car analogy: It is like taking a new car for a test drive only to return to the dealership to discover that your old car has been crushed into a cube.
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Indeed - M$ has done this since WinNT - I had installed a winnt server from the "trial" cd they sent our company and it would reboot on the hour after the 180day period. I was perplexed when we called them to purchase and they told us we would need to re-install - back in those days there was no "exporting the domain and user settings" that was actually workable/sane. Does not surprise me at all.
I do know I can upgrade from the beta of SME server 8 to the full version without any problems... or re-installs
Re:You're Surprised at No Take Backs? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm damn sure there was a warning in the giant pages of stuff I had to read before I was given the W7 RC. Certainly, I read this and went "Erm, yeah..."
On top of which, it's always been very clearly "Do NOT install on a production system, this is for testing only". If it wiped my drive wholesale, it wouldn't be a catastrophe, because it's not on a system I can't trivially re-install. Methinks he didn't really read all the details...
Re:You're Surprised at No Take Backs? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is clearly stated on the site where the Release Candidate is downloaded from that it is not recommended to install on your main machine as it will be necessary to reinstall a different OS at the end of the evaluation period. It is intended to be used on a testing machine, or by people who don't mind reinstalling after March next year.
It amazes me that Microsoft give away a trial version of their new OS for anyone to try out for almost a year and there are so many people whose response is negative. If you don't want to have to reinstall next year then don't use it. Or wait for the retail release and buy a copy.
If I gave you a house on a rent-free 12 month lease would you piss and whine about how inconvenient moving out would be?
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If I gave you a house on a rent-free 12 month lease would you piss and whine about how inconvenient moving out would be?
While I agree with your intent, I would chose my analogies more carefully.
In the case of Windows 7, you won't have saved anything if you purchase Windows 7 a year later. It will still be the same price. At most you would have saved a few quid interest on putting your money in the bank during your year of free Windows 7.
Since housing is so incredibly expensive in comparison, you would most likely have saved an absolute fortune in rent/mortgage interest, that you could have saved up as part of a deposit on a
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I dunno, I think Win7's more super-user-friendly than Vista, and as far as I can tell, there's not really anything missing compared to XP. Would you be able to point me to the Win7 specific issues (not the ones that are Windows in general, as we all know there's many of those).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I think just unchecking Use Visual Styles does the trick.
Late to the party! (Score:5, Informative)
I See No Problem With This (Score:5, Informative)
MS has been upfront about this since before they pushed the RC.
Re:I See No Problem With This (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
er... you don't even need to read the EULA to know this. It's the second bullet point after the "Here's what you need to know" on the Windows 7 download page [microsoft.com]. The one that says Watch the calendar in bold.
Other bolded items in that bullet point are June 1, 2010 and March 1, 2010 (twice). Gee, should read the unbolded text to find out why those dates are important?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's also nicer than the alternative (Score:5, Interesting)
The normal course of action for a time limited demo would be to simply stop functioning when your time expires. That is what I expect from such things and how most of them work.
However, what happens if you didn't get all your data off and so on? Well, this offers you a way to be able to operate the system, just with restrictions. It is a nicer way of handling things.
Upgraded (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It would be awesome if Apple made an ad mentioning that since Microsoft users are so used to random crashes they made it a feature in their new release.
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Whilst modded "funny", it's this preconcieved notion and the spite of the *nix community that actually makes their arguments look far poorer.
I took a RHEL class (instructor FROM RedHat) a while back, and 1/4 of the class was dedicated to bashing Windows. Oddly enough, most of his complaints were from a lack of knowledge, not because of the OS, so what does it say when you keep pushing that kind of attitude when people are trying to make *nix more successful and widely received?
Re:Upgraded (Score:4, Insightful)
Oddly enough, most of his complaints were from a lack of knowledge
See also:
In summary, people who don't know a system will claim it's inferior to the one they do know to justify their ignorance.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Upgraded (Score:4, Insightful)
I love when people bash Windows based on their experiences from 10 years ago.
Ubuntu crashes this box more than XP does...
Story's title is flamebait (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not shutting down to force updates, it's shutting down when the trial period expires.
This is well known, was discussed here several times and is clearly mentioned on the Microsoft download page.
To be honest it seems like slashdot has more stories about Microsoft than about Free software.
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Story's title is still misleading. 90%+ of people would read the title as "force system patch updates", not "upgrading the OS to a different version."
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Is anyone else besides me worried... (Score:4, Funny)
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Actually not as far fetched as that. VMware just had an incident exactly like this with their ESX product. They accidentally left a time bomb from beta testing in their production release. They have since ceased putting time bombs in their beta products because of this.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/13/vmware_apologises_12_august_code/ [theregister.co.uk]
Not news (Score:2)
Been there, done that (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I think you mean Windows ME (Millennium) but it worked opposite of this RC, it was only working for up to 2 hours per day.
Is this really new? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did everyone think MS was giving away a free OS??? I've come across people in other forums literally cussing out MS as if this is some dirty trick.
Never underestimate the stupidity of some people. Like they think you have two options with Windows 7...either download the free version or go the store and buy the version that costs $100.
Morons.
That's OK (Score:4, Funny)
What about Release 7000? (Score:2)
The original public release (I believe 7000) stated it would work until August 1, 2009. This hasn't changed, right?
This might have saved my company a headache (Score:2, Funny)
We had one customer several years ago who complained that our product stopped working all of the sudden. The customer yelled at us and threatened to sue us out of existence.
We looked into his problem anf it turns out he used an evaluation copy of Windows 2000 and the license expired on him.
It was a bank in LA. I forget the name. The bastards are probrably collecting TARP funds.
An upgrade is technically possible... (Score:5, Interesting)
Say, oh, 15 million people install RC (I did.)
Come June, you want to start getting paid (you're M$), you have two options...
1. Release an 'upgrade to paid version' where you charge people FULL PRICE for the equivilent of whatever they're running. (I'm using ultimate)
2. Force people to pay for the version they choose AND reinstall everything.
Now, to get the most money out of me, and I'd bet most everbody, they should do #1. A year from now, I'm going to have installed a lot of stuff, done a LOT of customizing and unless it's just time to rebuild, I'm REALLY not going to want to reinstall. I would be HAPPY to pay for Ultimate at that point. The alternative is go back to Vista which I've already paid for or reboot every 2 hours. Neither are good for me, so I'll start looking for a crack. Time is money, and I'd spend way more money rebuilding to get off the RC than I'd spend paying for an ultimate license.
But, I'd bet Microsoft is going #2. No betting actually, that's the plan. So they're going to have a bunch of people who are just going to deal with reboots. Then there will be a bunch of people who are going to go the cracking route. Then there's the people who are going to pay, but will downgrade because they don't use all that ultimate crap anyway. And what's left, are the people who fall in line and do what M$ wants them too. But think of all the money they could have gotten from the others, had they only offered an upgrade path...
And it's not like it's a complicated upgrade, just replace the part of the system that makes this an RC build! That's got to be easier than a service pack!
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Full disclosure, I expect that between the time the full version is released, and this one expires, I will have a need to reinstall.
I'm the BOFH here, and when someone needs a new, snazzy fast computer, I order me a new one and they get mine. Trickle down economics really does work! I think dell just came out with some new models :)
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A year from now, I'm going to have installed a lot of stuff, done a LOT of customizing and unless it's just time to rebuild, I'm REALLY not going to want to reinstall.
A year from now, I'll still have all my important stuff on my XP partition, which I will upgrade to Win7.
Before the upgrade, any data worth saving from the old Win7 partition will be copied to my 2nd hard drive, then copied back to my new Win7 installation after the upgrade.
Then I'll probably convert the old Win7 partition back from NTFS to EXT3 (or maybe EXT4 by then, depending) and reinstall Ubuntu (provided I can get their boot manager to work with my hard drive geometry, which it hasn't in about 2 years
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this being posted over and over on very tech site?
Who cares?
You're installing a beta or a release candidate. Do you expect it to be supported forever?
And are we really surprised Microsoft put in just a tiny bit of protection to prevent the average joe from continuing to use Windows 7 RC forever?
This is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why people keep bringing up this issue. It's a release candidate being released for evaluation of software that isn't free. If they didn't disable it after a certain date, people would continue to use it indefinitely, and then would expect support as well. By forcing people to upgrade to the release version, it ensures they're not using an old, buggy release candidate. (Whether the final release will be better remains to be seen, of course, this is a Microsoft product, after all :-)
Everyone is given fair warning about this before installing the RC (which shouldn't really be on production systems anyway). If you don't like what you see, then stop using it, otherwise upgrade to the release version when it comes out.
A method to upgrade to release without having to completely reinstall would be nice, but they've never done that in the past and I wouldn't expect to see it done this time, either.
I thought 7 was supposed to be free? (Score:2, Interesting)
After the debacle of Vista, I could have sworn I read on this very site a few weeks ago that Win 7 was going to offered as a FREE upgrade, at least to Vista users. Am I on crack or did I actually see that story?
As opposed to just crashing every two hours? (Score:3, Interesting)
Will they include a dialog box so that we know Windows didn't just crash again?
Actually, this reminds me of an entry from SKB's classic Devil's DP Dictionary:
An oldie, but a goodie!
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Windows ME HARDER!
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Vista was WindowsME, Windows 7 is Vista SP3. They just want to get rid of the name "Vista" since it's become synonymous with "Fail".
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You're not *entitled* to sweet shit all in an RC version of software. They aren't saying "You can use it for a year, but for 3 months we're going to make it difficult." They're saying "You can use this, but it's not meant to be long term, and we're going to make sure you don't forget that."