the beta is available from tomorrow.
is it worth risking?

No Gerry. Particularly for you. But seriously, not unless you have a spare PC that you don't need (that meets the hefty requirements) and you just want to try it out.

what do you need to run windows 7?

A computer that runs.

So you're right out.

Basically, if you have a computer that can run Vista, you can run Windows 7. But again, I wouldn't put it on my primary machine if it were me.

* 1GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
* 1GB of main memory
* 16GB of available disk space
* Support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (for the Aero interface)
* A DVD-R/W drive

have all of that,were thinking of getting a new computer hopefully soonish . . . .

I was forced to buy a new compter right before the holidays. My motherboard died in the old one. Came with Vista and Windows 7.

Windows 7 won't be out until later this year.

I typed it by mistake, 'cause I don't type well.

I might back up my HDD and give this a try.

Fixed.

I think you mean Internet Explorer 7.

IE 8 beta is out now.

I'll wait for this to come out before buying a new computer. Good Windows versions seem to skip every other generation.

Other than the pop-up every time I want to run an install application, I haven't had any real problems with Vista. I don't see what all the fuss was about.

I've been using Vista for close to a year now and have not had a single issue with it.

Oh, and that annoying pop-up? You want to turn off Vista's UAC.

1.Click Start and then open Control Panel.
2.In the Control Panel, click User Accounts and Family Safety.
3.Click User Accounts.
4.Click Turn User Account Control on or off.
5.Clear the tick or check mark on the box beside the Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer option.
6.Click OK.
7.When prompted, restart the computer. Note that the changes will affect all users on the computer.
8.To enable the UAC, simply tick or select the checkbox again

Do that, and you'll never see that annoying thing again.

Thanks. I'll try that when I get home.

MARCUS IS FROM THE FUTURE!!

C-net has posted this review of the Windows 7 beta:

Windows 7 beta: First impressions

Windows 7 could be one of Microsoft's greatest operating systems, if it fulfills the promise shown by the unofficial beta version (build 7000) we have been testing for the past couple of days.

Let me preface these quick impressions of Redmond's latest opus by saying that I came to Windows 7 after having happily run the much-maligned Windows Vista on my Intel Core 2 Duo-based PC for the past 18 months (alongside Ubuntu).

I found Vista to be a worthy upgrade from Windows XP SP2. Despite its obvious flaws (can you say "resource hog"?) and the acknowlegement that some of its features need to be disabled by default, Vista at heart is a much more stable and usable operating system than XP, which was first released in 2001.

The release of Service Pack 1 and gradual driver improvements have built on Microsoft's somewhat-shaky Vista beginning.

Coming from this background, I have been pleased to discover over the past several days that Microsoft appears to have built on Vista's strengths and addressed most of its weaknesses with the beta release of Windows 7.

I found the Windows 7 beta a painless install. Out-of-the-box driver support on our test machine was perfect, and it took only half an hour and two quick reboots to begin running a stable desktop environment, though we wondered why Windows 7 created a 200MB partition in addition to its main partition. The 33MB of updates quickly came down the pipe upon loading the desktop.

Basic desktop performance was strong; the reports that Windows 7 is simply faster than Vista appear to be true. Certainly, Windows 7 had no problem simultaneously installing and launching applications, downloading files, browsing the Web, and carrying out other tasks on our modest 2.8GHz Pentium 4, which has only an 80GB IDE hard disk and 512MB of RAM.

Vista's most visible annoyance, User Account Control, has been pared right back on its default setting, and we encountered it only a couple of times throughout a whole morning of installing applications. However, if you feel nostalgic for UAC's old behavior, you can easily change it back via Windows 7's new Action Center, which now centralizes all of the security updates and warning alerts that Windows throws your way.

Windows 7 recommended that we install a third-party antivirus package (it suggested Kaspersky and AVG), but its antispyware package Defender comes preinstalled. Microsoft appears to have an antivirus package installed under the hood; when downloading new software with Firefox, we were told that our downloads were being scanned for viruses.

I particularly like the new photo-realistic device icons, and the overhaul of the way Windows handles and ejects USB storage devices. Microsoft appears to have wiped out a lot of the Windows XP-era interface quirks of Vista; the result is a much more simplistic, unified experience for common tasks.

I also enjoyed the overhaul of the Windows taskbar, especially the slick graphics, but a bug prevented us from being able to use the preview function (it showed a black rectangle instead), and you'll want to play with the taskbar settings to get this piece of the Windows 7 puzzle just right. It's easy to get minimized windows mixed up with launcher buttons, for example.

I want to stress that we didn't test the Windows 7 beta exhaustively, and business users will need to closely examine deployment software and how the operating system integrates into their existing environments, as well as its ability to work well with third-party software. For example, we couldn't get Adobe Systems' Creative Suite 3 to install on Windows 7 beta; the installer told us we needed to quit Internet Explorer first.

But perhaps the most important thing to note about the software is that at first glance, it has much more of that nebulous "Windows XP feel" than Vista ever did. Even on our modest machine, Windows 7 didn't thrash the hard disk or ever feel unresponsive, except when we were installing Apple's iTunes, a notorious pain on Windows systems.

In general, this signals that Microsoft has spent a lot of effort with Windows 7 on delivering a solid operating system that won't "wow" anyone but will satisfy them on a much deeper level. In other words, just what the doctor--and the customers--ordered.

Apparently you do not realize just how much of an ass pain that was, your computer asking if you pinkie-swear that you really, really want to run (or install) a program. Machines are to serve me, not the other way around. That bit of "safety" cost Microsoft zillions of good will.

Just read that anyone who buys a new computer with Vista on it after July of this year will get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out.