Windows 7 Licensing-ish Question

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Sovereign

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So I have my (legit) beta keys (one for 32, one for 64). I plan on purchasing Windows 7 as soon as it comes out (barring some Vista-esque show-stopping epic fail). If I start running Windows 7 exclusively (which I know is a risk in and of itself) is there a possibility I may end up with an expired beta/RC but be unable to install a final code release because it is not yet available even though the time-bombs in the beta/RC have expired?
 
Uhmmm... that makes no sense whatsoever. :)

Windows 7 Beta 1 (if activated) will continue to work till August of this year. If you're still running Beta 1 at that time (because 1 more beta may come out, more likely it'll go straight to a release candidate next) you should shoot yourself in the head or something...

When Windows 7 goes RTM and is actually available as a finished product, you'd never install it on top of the beta or release candidate installations; you'd install it clean, like the brand new finished OS it is.

You get that, right? :D
 
Joe Average said:
Uhmmm... that makes no sense whatsoever. :)

Windows 7 Beta 1 (if activated) will continue to work till August of this year. If you're still running Beta 1 at that time (because 1 more beta may come out, more likely it'll go straight to a release candidate next) you should shoot yourself in the head or something...

When Windows 7 goes RTM and is actually available as a finished product, you'd never install it on top of the beta or release candidate installations; you'd install it clean, like the brand new finished OS it is.

You get that, right? :D
Click to expand...

He's asking if there's a chance that Windows 7 Beta is going to expire before Windows 7 final is available, which would leave him without a functioning operating system.

Is there a chance, yes. But as Joe implied above, you shouldn't expect to use a pre-release OS for an extended period of time. There will be more builds made available as the (as yet unannounced) release date gets closer. You will want to install those since they'll have numerous bug fixes, compatibility updates, and performance tweaks that you won't be able to get using an old build.

So the beta's expiration date is a non-issue,since they'll most likely have announced a solid release date by the time the release candidate phase begins. The RC builds aren't going to expire before then.
 
He's still got Vista to fall back on... been keeping an eye on him for a long time (at the forum, that is, I'm not a stalker dammit) so I know he's got experience with Vista, and that time I was being a bit facetious but... Sovereign already knows this. ;)
 
Am I going to be left out in the cold by an expired RC before a retail OS is available? It seems the answer is no...which makes me happy.
 
Joe Average said:
He's still got Vista to fall back on... been keeping an eye on him for a long time (at the forum, that is, I'm not a stalker dammit) so I know he's got experience with Vista, and that time I was being a bit facetious but... Sovereign already knows this. ;)
Click to expand...

Which would require installing an OS twice instead of just once. As for the rest of the post, I have no idea what you're going on about. :)
 
Windows 7 will probbaly be RTM this summer/fall, but that means youll have to wait a few more months before you can buy it since MS gives OEM's RTM first so they can fart around and do nothing with it until their new computer models come out. They dont release the retail version until after OEM's start shipping computers with it.

I bet RTM will come out before beta keys expire (you may have to do "slmgr -rearm" a couple times though and extend the period), but I think its pretty much impossible that youll be able to buy it.
 
I bet I can kludge the Windows Easy Transfer system to ensure that I don't have to do all that much work (on backups etc) even though I'm going to have to install a clean copy of 7.
 
idividebyzero said:
Windows 7 will probbaly be RTM this summer/fall, but that means youll have to wait a few more months before you can buy it since MS gives OEM's RTM first so they can fart around and do nothing with it until their new computer models come out. They dont release the retail version until after OEM's start shipping computers with it.

I bet RTM will come out before beta keys expire (you may have to do "slmgr -rearm" a couple times though and extend the period), but I think its pretty much impossible that youll be able to buy it.
Click to expand...

I believe the pre-release expiration date is hard-coded to a specific date. When Vista RC2 expired we got a warning saying that the OS was expired and the system would reboot every hour or two. Then a month after it expired, it wouldn't let us log in anymore and instead told us to contact Microsoft to get an official copy of the OS.
 
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