University/College Students (potential free windows 7)

[Fuman]

Windows 7 professional is out. university/college students that have MSDN access should be able to download it for free. I know University of Waterloo students can. UW students can go find the msdn link via ist.uwaterloo.ca

Enjoy,

[SilentJay]

This may lead to abuse, but there is a thread in RFD related to getting MSDNAA accounts for students.

[RemaerdLacidar]

Sweet! Thanks for the heads up, luckily my school hasn't deactivated my MSDN account even though I graduated 2 years ago :)

[Fuman]

This may lead to abuse, but there is a thread in RFD related to getting MSDNAA accounts for students.
link?
I thought only post-secondary educational institutions can get accounts for students.

[omalak]

bah! torrents are your friend lol

Windows 7 is nice, lots of cool features, and runs pretty fast even on a netbook!

[Aitch]

Since I don't have an MSDN account, I joined via the link on RFD. Figured I'd see if I can get a copy of Windows7 for a cheap price ($19US) and then decide if I want to try installing it after I've downloaded it.

[Fuman]

i searched RFD, you are talking about ACM.org?
I won't call it abuse per-say, you are still paying $19 bucks. Although, $19 for windows 7 is lower than employee pricing for Vista.

[sp3GT]

I know my school does have MSDN access, but where do I find a link to download Windows 7?

[Fuman]

I know my school does have MSDN access, but where do I find a link to download Windows 7?
you need to search on your school website for the MSDN portal link.

[JohnyGT]

Oh sweet, i just checked up, yes its free to download a genuine copy,

yay!

[SilentJay]

Thing is, $19 is for a lot more than just Win7... Which happens only to be the Pro edition and not the ultimate (RC) that i've been using for the past few months.

There's everything between VB.net to Server 2008 pro included in the subscription. I <3 company bandwith :chuckle

[openuser]

I downloaded one too via MSDN-AA.
It sucks how they are giving out Win7 Ultimate edition Release Candidate but give only the "Professional" edition after release.

Haven't tried the Windows 7 although I had the ISO on my harddrive for nearly a month.. Too much to lose right now to do a upgrade or do a clean install. Hope Wubi guys come up with windows 7 installer soon ;)


Addition: In addition to the windows 7, you guys can download Windows XP professional and Windows Vista Business for free.
This is something to think about when you are purchasing a new computer! Why pay for pre-installed Operating System when you can get a much better computer without an OS, and install the free Windows that you acquired from MSDN-AA?

In Another Node: There's probably $800-$1000 worth of microsoft product on MSDN-AA that you can acquire for free.. among them, I find MS Visio 2007 to be most useful :P

[SilentJay]

Server 2003/2008 is nice - great for those thinking of MCSE

[Fuman]

I downloaded one too via MSDN-AA.
It sucks how they are giving out Win7 Ultimate edition Release Candidate but give only the "Professional" edition after release.

Haven't tried the Windows 7 although I had the ISO on my harddrive for nearly a month.. Too much to lose right now to do a upgrade or do a clean install. Hope Wubi guys come up with windows 7 installer soon ;)


Addition: In addition to the windows 7, you guys can download Windows XP professional and Windows Vista Business for free.
This is something to think about when you are purchasing a new computer! Why pay for pre-installed Operating System when you can get a much better computer without an OS, and install the free Windows that you acquired from MSDN-AA?

In Another Node: There's probably $800-$1000 worth of microsoft product on MSDN-AA that you can acquire for free.. among them, I find MS Visio 2007 to be most useful :P
Ultimate doesn't really have features that most people need/want.

[Aitch]

^^ I agree, for me and probably a lot of others Ultimate is probably not needed.

I finally got around to installing W7 which I downloaded last week. I was on XP and at the moment (knock on wood) I see no reason to go back. This from a die-hard Vista hater (I know it has become much better now but I've seen others in my office still have issues with it on new computers). This is my timeline (for a first-time OS upgrader!)

Friday - download W7 Professional (via MSDN, $19 to join through another student organization as I don't have access from my academic department)
Monday - backup current documents (unfortunately forgot to do bookmarks and archived emails but I can live without those)
Tuesday am - final check for docs to backup, new 7/Vista drivers for hardware if needed. Start W7 install over XP (decided to try without formatting).
1 hour later - Almost complete, but hanging. Forgot to unplug USB mouse and external drive! After that, install finishes and W7 is up and running.

I was expecting more drama. But it was running right away! Issues:
NVIDIA video driver: The only driver I had to manually upgrade to a 64-bit Vista driver. My Windows Experience Index was at 1.0(!) prior to this; now its at 4.7. Every other driver was automatically updated during the install.
Connecting to work network: IT services doesn't like my computer, had to clone my MAC address (same as with XP). Advantage over Vista: less than a month ago, we tried and failed miserably to get a Vista laptop to see our workgroup printer (which is hosted on XP). On the second try, W7 properly mapped the XP workgroup and automatically set the printer as default.

By Tuesday afternoon most of my usual programs were installed, and I was working productively. I now have the rest installed as well.

Subjective assessment: Recently, my XP install was getting bogged down with Vista look-alike add-ons, widgets, etc; on the same hardware with updated drivers (and now 64-bit instead of 32) W7 is obviously much faster, especially launching programs (both regularly and right after startup). I'd still venture that it is faster than my original XP system, without the add-ons. There are lots of great features, it seems to play well with other computers, old programs designed for XP (even without running in compatability mode) and the graphics performance for everyday applications seems much better than XP, again with the identical hardware.

For reference, I have a Dell Vostro 1500 notebook, 2GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo chip @ 2GHz. Any votes for upgrading to 4GB RAM?

[Fobio]

for those who've been running Win7-x64 for awhile now, how has the hibernation feature been working for you?

it's works like cake on my x86 32-bit install, but for the life of me, it'd never work right with my 64-bit install on another PC. this morning, that windows flag notified me (after going thru Vista for the past few yrs) that the "Away Mode" in my bios/mobo conflicts with 64-bit windows...this is like the first bit of confirmation of why I couldn't get hibernation mode to work right...

[S.F.W.]

for those who've been running Win7-x64 for awhile now, how has the hibernation feature been working for you?

it's works like cake on my x86 32-bit install, but for the life of me, it'd never work right with my 64-bit install on another PC. this morning, that windows flag notified me (after going thru Vista for the past few yrs) that the "Away Mode" in my bios/mobo conflicts with 64-bit windows...this is like the first bit of confirmation of why I couldn't get hibernation mode to work right...

I had some troubles with hibernation in Windows 7. I ran the energy report, and found the conflict. Now everything works.
http://blogs.msdn.com/robmar/archive/2009/05/18/powercfg-energy-windows-7-power-management-reports.aspx

[Fobio]

I had some troubles with hibernation in Windows 7. I ran the energy report, and found the conflict. Now everything works.
http://blogs.msdn.com/robmar/archive/2009/05/18/powercfg-energy-windows-7-power-management-reports.aspx

thanks man...will give it a go when I get home!

[SirWanker]

For reference, I have a Dell Vostro 1500 notebook, 2GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo chip @ 2GHz. Any votes for upgrading to 4GB RAM?

If you only have the 32bit, that is the max you can go to. It will make a noticeable difference in performance, especially since it costs ~$100CND for 2*2048MB modules. If you have the 64bit, 8GB is the way to go but I don't think the $1000CND premium is worth it.

[Ziploc]

Ultimate doesn't really have features that most people need/want.

Really? What features are those? This isn't like Vista Pro/Ultimate you know.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare-editions

[SirWanker]

Really? What features are those? This isn't like Vista Pro/Ultimate you know.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare-editions

http://www.pcworld.com/zoom?id=167444&page=1&zoomIdx=1

[Fuman]

From the 2 links posted, you can see most people don't need the extra features found in Ultimate. Professional is fine for most users.
It is not like Professional can't read other languages (e.g. Chinese, Thai).
Professional also has remote desktop, so business users can already remote into their work desktop.

BitLocker and the other extras are really not neccessary for the typical users. Even a programmer, gamer such as myself are not going to use these features

[SirWanker]

If you only have the 32bit, that is the max you can go to. It will make a noticeable difference in performance, especially since it costs ~$100CND for 2*2048MB modules. If you have the 64bit, 8GB is the way to go but I don't think the $1000CND premium is worth it.

oops TigerDirect has Patriot 8192MB ( 2*4096) PC6400 DDR2 800MHz SODIMM Laptop Memory for $472.99CND http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4626175&CatId=3412

[Aitch]

If you only have the 32bit, that is the max you can go to. It will make a noticeable difference in performance, especially since it costs ~$100CND for 2*2048MB modules. If you have the 64bit, 8GB is the way to go but I don't think the $1000CND premium is worth it.

I have 64-bit since my chip etc could support it; however my wallet won't support an 8gb upgrade! I'm still debating the upgrade to 4gb.

[SilentJay]

What mainstream applications can actually use more than 4gb?

[SirWanker]

What mainstream applications can actually use more than 4gb?

You're confusing this with the 64bit VS 32bit. I personally find the more memory the better.

[Aitch]

Well I jumped and bought two 2gb sticks of RAM today. Hope to install tomorrow!

Tonight I'm doing a batch resize in Photoshop, with Bridge and Firefox open as well, and am at 70-80% RAM usage. "Unused" RAM is actually used for loading programs etc so its handy to have more available.

[Ziploc]

From the 2 links posted, you can see most people don't need the extra features found in Ultimate. Professional is fine for most users.
It is not like Professional can't read other languages (e.g. Chinese, Thai).
Professional also has remote desktop, so business users can already remote into their work desktop.

BitLocker and the other extras are really not neccessary for the typical users. Even a programmer, gamer such as myself are not going to use these features

Exactly. I program, game, and do all kinds of stuff on my desktop and wouldn't use those features either. Professional is perfectly fine.

[shu5892001]

hey anyone know whats the difference between the X86 version and the X64? which version should i download? thank you

[Fuman]

hey anyone know whats the difference between the X86 version and the X64? which version should i download? thank you

if your processor is 32-bit, get x86
if your processor is 64-bit, get x64