No need, MS is letting people use these 10 keys.

W7 Generic Keys

x86
4HJRK-X6Q28-HWRFY-WDYHJ-K8HDH
GG4MQ-MGK72-HVXFW-KHCRF-KW6KY
TQ32R-WFBDM-GFHD2-QGVMH-3P9GC
QXV7B-K78W2-QGPR6-9FWH9-KGMM7
6JKV2-QPB8H-RQ893-FW7TM-PBJ73

x64
482XP-6J9WR-4JXT3-VBPP6-FQF4M
7XRCQ-RPY28-YY9P8-R6HD8-84GH3
D9RHV-JG8XC-C77H2-3YF6D-RYRJ9
RFFTV-J6K7W-MHBQJ-XYMMJ-Q8DCH
JYDV8-H8VXG-74RPT-6BJPB-X42V4

Ehhh, I got the 32-bit beta of it, put it on my xp, and installed it. I really like it, except for the part that my sound card is xp only compatible and no cc for it D:

So, in the end, we put xp on our c drive, and windows 7 on our d drive.
EDIT: Oh ya I forgot: I heard that the beta ends august first, will that mean all windows 7 betas ill just go inactive?

without warning

of course you could do the illegal thing but you'd end up in no-update limbo, ever-prone to horrible crackers and their leagues of botnets

i have seen this before

Portable Operating System Interface - POSIX
Works on Mac OS X, most Linux distros and Windows(with some work).
Along with 20ish other OSes.

I'm very interested in this, it looks like microsoft is changing their ways, they realized just about everyone thinks vista its a POS (bill gates agrees? http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3a2zqRc1jvs) and obviously feel that mac and linux are catching up. The only reason 60+% use windows is because of the games, the others just use it because its the pre-installed system, can't learn to use Linux (installing games on linux, in my experience, is crap), are used to windows and don't want to change to mac.

We should all support Linux as it is free and the more support it gets the better it gets, however people are interested in what is the best and easiest at this moment in time, so if it takes a complete utter computer noob a few clicks to install a game in windows, but in linux it takes a novice-competent linux user a few lines of code and/OR a little bit of knowledge then it's going to be less popular... it's as simple as that, it needs a lot of small changes here and there to really take off.

Macs are decent OS's but they are not supported by games developers, they have a few file system things that could be improved IMO but the only reason macs aren't as popular is because windows took an early lead has the majority of the gaming market and they don't want to spend money on making two versions (even though it has been found to be more profitable).

I think microsoft are now trying to take a few aspects people like about other OS's and implement it into there OS. The major complaints about vista was it's huge system requirements COMPARED to other OS's, for example you can run a version of linux on a DS, and all/most distro's from a DVD/CD, now windows 7 as very low system requirements (some guy on youtube has it running on a 800MHz cpu and 512 RAM). I think this is a good move

Using W7 now, it's not so bad. Much better than Vista (I haven't had a popup asking me if I want to allow my click or not yet). Coming from XP it's a little hard to find things, and as someone else mentioned my sound card doesn't work right now (I'll have to fiddle with it, maybe there's a driver update somewheres...). Everything's gone much like a reinstall for XP, with some nice glass everywhere. I might actually buy W7 at launch, depending on how useful I find it during the next few weeks.

Linux distros have had their chance to improve. But instead of working toward something, they have all decided, time after time, to try to do things their own way.

I've tried giving desktop Linux a chance for seven years now. It's not going, and will never go, anywhere.

This is a person who has obviously not used a mainstream distro in the last 12-18 months.

Do the terms "apt-get," "wget," or "yum install" mean anything to you? What about .deb, or .rpm files? The main distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Knoppix) have supported single click installations for a long time. The only apps these days that require building from source are bleeding edge betas, and small-scale developers who provide solutions to niche markets.

And even then, its not even that hard to build from source.



The joys of this system is that it allows users to build in their own options as needed. The more non-standard options you want, the more options that must go in the configure line. But at its most base, evne installing from source isn't that hard.

Way to make the problem worse by perpetuating a myth.

how is it a myth when you perfectly proved my point? In the post is a little bit of linux knowledge and a few lines of code (in my post I meant OR a little bit of knowledge, but meh...), and like I said not everyone will be able to pick this up very easily.

Also you underestimate how stupid humans are when faced with something completely new to them.

This would be fixed if there was a mandatory tutorial for how to install things from a .deb. Or a mandatory "Contact a friend who has used linux for a while to tell you how to use this" welcome screen.

Guys this is a place for talking about Windows 7. Lets not argue.

EDIT: ♥♥♥♥ ya guys who got Windows 7 try the MSpaint. ITS AWESOME COMPARED TO XP'S!

sudo is the greatest command in existence.

sudo make me a sandwich?
also installing on linux is not hard. even from source. no idea what people are complaining about..
they should probably have mandatory tutorials though..

I'm interested in Windows 7, because although XP is the best operating system ever made, it's getting old, and it's only a matter of time before it starts being incompatible.

What I'm REALLY waiting for is a Linux OS that is fully compatible with windows and doesn't require a computing degree to set up and use.

And I will never use Mac, it's expensive, you can't upgrade an apple computer, there aren't enough programs, the logic is weird as, and apple is responsible for iTunes, and therefore the slow death of digital music quality. Not to mention it'd make me a mac user...

no argument has gone on so far... Just OS discussions.