It’s the middle of March and it looks like the Windows 7 Release Candidate will be out in a month or so. The first beta has been a tremendously positive step for Microsoft. The beta was kept open for almost a month – principally due to customer demand. And the reviews have been uniformly positive.
And as most of you know, I’ve been very bullish on Windows 7. By and large, I have used the beta on my primary home system since the first weekend that is was available. But I’ve had a couple of problems. First, I haven’t been able to get a HomeGroup setup. That hasn’t been a big deal since I don’t have any other systems at home using Windows 7. Second, I’ve had real problems with Media Center. In particular, I haven’t been able to download a media Guide since I installed the beta.
Thankfully, my tests of current builds indicate that Microsoft has resolved these problems – and a host of other problems. I can create a HomeGroup now, although it requires me to use IPV6 to do so. Since I’m using a custom firmware build and there are a bunch of XP and Vista systems that are also part of my home network, I won’t keep IPV6 going. I just don’t want to introduce any network instability at this time.
More importantly, my Windows Media Center troubles are now a thing of the past. I can now download the guide to my heart’s content. This makes me quite happy. And there are a whole lot of fit-and-finish issues that have been polished in the meantime. In short, I am very confident that Windows 7 will be (or should be) generally available sometime this summer. Indeed, Windows 7 is more ready to be released than Vista was when it was released. Yes, there are things that need to be fixed. And I am quite confident that the Windows team will get them addressed.
-Roo