Today marks the public release of Windows 7
Service Pack 1 Beta.
To those that dont know what beta means, they probably shouldn't even consider getting this update. However many of us, the tech savvy, aren't afraid to use a beta, often they work better than their predecessors. Because as many know there are many many steps of bug testing to even get close to a beta stage and by the time software reaches beta its pretty solid... for the most part. I will update my experience with the beta later on.
Windows 7 was officially released for sale October 22 2009, however i have been using it since late April or early May. How could that be? Free Beta testing offered to the public! go onto the Microsoft website and do some searching and you might be surprised at how much they offer for free. sure that beta version of Windows 7 i was using is no longer good, it expired in March 2010, but there is a solution to that.
Microsoft offers a free 30day trial of Windows 7 Ultimate which at the end of the 30 days you can simply extend the trial. You can do this a total of 4 times which give you 120days or 1/3 of a year. After which time you would have to format your computer and re-install from scratch, a minor inconvenience to using windows for free. I usually perform a wipe on my computer once or twice a year just to keep things running smoothly, so doing just once more isn't really a problem.
Why wouldn't i just pay for Windows. Well plain and simply put, durability, its just not going to last. what i mean here is that in July of 2011, just one year away from now, the beta for Windows 8 will come out and then probably Fall 2011 or right before Christmas time it will be released for sale. I was very much going to buy Windows 7 until i found that information out. While the details on what Windows 8 will feature are slim to non-existent, i would hope they would atleast have usb 3.0 support as well as bluetooth 3.0 and be able to natively play blu-rays without the additional need for 3rd party software. Perhaps if Windows 8 sticks around for as long as XP did, i will pay to own it, on all my machines. But until then i will take the free route.
As for Pirating software and more particularly the OS, i am not a fan. I just dont trust it. Sure you can Download any version of Windows in a torrent and install it for free and not be pestered by any 30 trial messages, but at what cost. Well on the front end there is no cost, there is no apparent downside. However, what if in the coding of the OS they have embedded some key-logging software or such that could potentially steal your account information or even secure files. Also there is always that chance of getting caught and sued for using pirated software, which is essentially theft. I find it all way to risky and just dont even bother to take that route when there are much safer solutions available.
No comments:
Post a Comment