How Windows 7 Beta Behaves when you don’t activate it (WGA)
February 23rd, 2009Microsoft introduced Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) in Windows XP. WGA acts as an anti-piracy measure for Windows. In XP it made a lot of sense for Microsoft, because XP required a product key during the install. For pirates that meant finding a key online. This was tricky, because keygens for Windows just don’t exist, so any key that they would find would be used by hundreds (or thousands) of other pirates. This made WGA easily pick out pirates and act accordingly. Vista and 7 don’t require product keys during the install, but give a 30-day grace period between the install and when WGA kicks in. WGA’s behavior when it identifies a copy of windows as “not genuine” has changed even within different service packs.
I believe WGA in XP is basically just a nag from the system notification area. In Vista RTM (pre service pack 1), WGA would disable AERO when the user logged in and only give an Internet Explorer window for the user to purchase a key. (Of course, the IE window allowed the user to open up the command prompt to do various things to get the system back without paying, but that’s not what this post is about.) Vista SP1’s WGA behavior was less of a show-stopper, and did allow the user to get to the desktop and use the computer semi-normally, but onto the Windows 7 behavior.
After a month of avoiding putting in my Windows 7 Beta key, I was greeted this dialogue box while using the computer: 
Windows 7’s update scheme supports adding new features to Windows
February 13th, 2009I just got this notification in my Windows 7 (beta) System Notification Area: 
Windows 7 Feature Focus: Burning Disk Images
January 23rd, 2009Windows 7 (currently in public beta) has a new and very useful feature built-in: burning disk images.
A simple double-click on an ISO file will bring up this simple interface: 
It couldn’t be simpler, but you will still need some third-party software if you want to create a disk image.
Downloading the Windows 7 Beta
January 10th, 2009If you’re curious about Windows 7 beta, downloading has resumed after Microsoft added a few more servers to handle the extreme demand. As far as I can tell downloading resumed within the last 30 minutes. I jumped on the oportunity and am downloading the 64-bit English version now. After specifying those requirements I was brought to a very brief survey page, which asked such things as my name, email address, job, and current OS. After that I was brought to the following page, which was pretty straightforward. (I blocked out the product key, duh.)
Windows 7 Beta Availability
January 7th, 2009The Windows 7 pubic beta will be available on the 9th. The code that Microsoft will make available for download was actually built on December 12th of last year. Get more information about it here.
Hey, there’s stuff on windows7.com!
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