Windows 7 Launch Date & Box Art Revealed

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

Alright, so this isn't new news, but for the few people who don't know, Microsoft announced the Windows 7 launch date last week, and that happens to be October 22, a Thursday. This is semi-odd placement, as it misses the "back-to-school" rush and also lands a bit short of the holiday season, but hey, at least they aren't rushing things.

Although the release date has been unveiled, pricing has not. We can expect that to fall in line with what we saw with Vista, if not a little bit lower. Also similar to Vista, 7 will become available in a variety of editions, the most popular on these shores of which will be Home Premium, Professional (Business) and Ultimate. For netbooks, Home Basic is sure to be a popular option.

Along with the new launch date, Microsoft has also revealed the box art on their store, and I have to say, it looks quite good. It's modern, clean, and doesn't say Vista on the cover (haw haw). In all seriousness though, I don't even use Windows as my primary OS, but I'm still excited to see this thing launch.

Windows 7 was built around your feedback, so you'll see a lot of things you've asked for. You asked us to make everyday tasks faster and easier, to make your PC work the way you want it to, and to make it possible to do new things. And that's exactly what we've done. See how it's come to life.

Source: Microsoft Store​

 

[madstork91]

This was the same date that was leaked near over a month ago if I'm not mistaken...

If a 64-bit 7 is anything like the current 64-bit Vista, or better , then you can count me in.

(for those of you following me an my anti vista campaign... *sigh* i am currently loaded up under 64-bit vista.)

 

[Doomsday]

Windows 7 will retire my Windows XP..
for a 64-bit windows, should i increase my RAM to 4GB or 8GB?!?

 

[THUMPer]

4GB:techgage::techgage::techgage:
As long as you turn of UAC, Windows Search/Indexing and turn off system Restore. Vista runs great. Same for 7

 

[Kougar]

Nice avvie, Doom. And naw, 4GB is plenty. For triple channel systems I'd say 6GB is the sweet spot. Anything more is just wasted unless the person does hours of content creation, video encoding, etc...

I run 6GB, but gave VMware an entire 1GB of memory to itself to run Ubuntu, I still can't notice it's even running at ~27% CPU usage.

 

[Rob Williams]

I concur... 4GB is fine. By the time you'll see the need for more, you'll probably want to build an entirely new machine.

I run 6GB, but gave VMware an entire 1GB of memory to itself to run Ubuntu, I still can't notice it's even running at ~27% CPU usage.

Not to side-swipe the convo... how are you liking VMware, or virtualization in general?

 

[madstork91]

Not that this is on topic either ;-p

I think you wont see many apps pushing the 4gb hard until you start seeing more lapty and the like with 4gb+

There are a lot of lapty's being sold atm, and I think some of them might become the standard specs for programmers.

 

[Doomsday]

4GB it is then..

Kougar, What do you hear?

 

[Merlin]

Decisions........Decisions
Will it never stop?
WinXp is begining to look like Win98

I'll do the fresh install, not an upgrade, I hate to have all the left over garbage.
As with work, I'll have to be familiar with Win7 to help my customers

 

[Kougar]

Not to side-swipe the convo... how are you liking VMware, or virtualization in general?

I think the 2 CPU limit in VMware is bull, and the control interface through the browser for remote access is a little obtuse when I'd prefer a simple program for local access to it. But otherwise it is working well so far, and I can safely say the Linux SMP code is light years better than the Windows SMP program. Forget that it's being run inside a virtualized OS, it runs just as fast on two threads than the Windows SMP does on four, not to mention it's actually stable code.

But about virtualization in general... I know that with each new line of processors Intel has made significant improvements onto their hardware virtualization, Nehalem's HV capabilities are definitely impressive. The load from leaving Ubuntu running is so minimal that I can play games, watch videos, do whatever without noticing or knowing it was running. Now if I was allowed to configure VMWare to use four threads, I'd make a second virtual Ubuntu install and no even use the Windows SMP client anymore...

4GB it is then..

Kougar, What do you hear?

Hear about what?

 

[madstork91]

I currently hear Bob Dylan - Shelter from the storm. Lulz.

 

[Doomsday]

Hear about what?

woopsy, sorry, i thought u were familiar with the dude in my avatar,Commander Adama from Battlestar Galactica, lol!
hmm, i recommend u watch the miniseries movie of Battlestar Galactica on 720p, if ur a Sci-Fi fan! and then u can answer me question too! hehe!

 

[Rob Williams]

I think the 2 CPU limit in VMware is bull

I agree... and the reason as to why that's the case is something I want to figure out. This limitation is worse on i7 since it's effectively getting only one real CPU core. Odd how that works, huh? The EPT advantages have me really wanting to upgrade to i7 though... I rarely ever need more than one core for what I do there.

As for the remote access... can you give me a general idea of where to start on that? I had no idea such a feature existed in the consumer version of VMware.

 

[Kougar]

I am using VMWare Server because that was freely available for use from their site. I am not entirely sure if they impose such CPU limits on VMware Workstation, which is what I apparently should be using. VMware server doesn't allow me to clone the virtual machine either.

VMWare server is built for use as a server VM that you log into from other machines, so it's a little unorthodox to administrate it from the machine it's actually running on. Most web browsers will outright prevent you from even accessing it because it flags the address as dangerous, but leave it to IE to let you browse there anyway.

 

[Rob Williams]

Oh, alright. I'm not familiar with VMware Server. I thought none of the free versions of VMware allowed <em>creation</em> of virtual machines though. Am I wrong? I'll have to check it out regardless...

As for VMware Workstation, it's what I use, and yes, it imposes the same 2-core restriction.