Microsoft released a public beta of Windows 7 and was immediately swamped with download requests. They pulled the beta so they could add more “infrastructure” (servers) to the mix, relaunched, and extended the time you have to download it.
Such a large public beta – basically a free though time-limited version of Windows for folks to use. Why such niceness?
My theory is they did this for two reasons. By getting it out there in almost finished form so soon, it will build up a large positive audience to overcome the Vista anxiety. The second reason is to force the manufacturers of hardware the the publishers of software to get on board and get drivers and patches ready. One of the big complaints about early Vista was that nothing would run on it (wrong, but that was the impression) because many drivers and patches were not available and took months to get to market. Already in a lot of online forums that I visit I’ve seen folks screaming for Windows 7 drivers and patches for those few things that don’t work like they did under Vista.
Good job Microsoft. You’re learning.
The link for Windows 7 on Microsoft’s site is:
No comments:
Post a Comment