TechNet Plus Subscribers - Download Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 BETA Now!!!

There is a little battle going on right now in Twitterland between Mark Relph (@mrelph) and Rick Claus (@Rickster_CDN) on who's going to install Windows 7 on their Dell Latitude E4300 notebook first.  Looks to me that Mark is winning but that's now why I'm writing this post.  I'm writing it because I know that many of you have a TechNet Plus subscription that you may have received at TechDays (free for 6-months for attending TechDays), or purchased because it provides amazing value in being able to evaluate MS software without any time restrictions.  Plus, you also get a couple of free support incidents worth the price of the subscription. 

In any case, no matter how you got it, log on to Subscriber Downloads right now!!  Why, you may ask?  If you have been waiting with baited breath for Windows 7 to come out so that you can play with it, wait no more.  It is available on Subscriber Downloads right now!!  Not only that, you can also download Windows Server 2008 R2 beta as well so that you can test out both the client and server piece of the next version of Windows.  In case you're wondering, yes, it is downloading to my machine as I write this post.

We'll keep you informed on more details and links on Windows 7 as they become available.  In the meantime, if you are a TechNet Plus subscriber, download it, install it on a test machine (don't use it in production, please) and let me know what you think by posting a comment on the blog or sending me an email at damirb@microsoft.com. 

Cheers....Damir

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2009
  In case you were wondering... Barnaby Jeans (@bjeans) beat us both due to a bad engineering sample Dell E4300 I started on and Mark Relphs bad DVD burn. On my production Dell E4300 - it took a short 16 minutes from start to finish. Once the network was connected, it auto setup a HomeGroup and connected to the internet for driver updates. To Windows 7 credit (and to Dell's) all drivers except 2 (wireless smartcard reader and a fingerprint reader) were baked in and working. Performance score - 3.9. three tenths of a point higher then vista install on same machine - go figure. More Later... Rick

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2009
  The activation keys are currently unavailable. Please install without using keys and check back in a few days to claim the keys. Sorry for the inconvenience. So you might not get your key today but you can STILL install :) WOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2009
  Yeah, good idea.  Now all I have to do is find the log. :)

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2009
  No deal - I can't download any of the packages from technet. File Transfer Manager says my validation succeeded but nothing gets downloaded. I tried other packages without success - there must be something wrong with the downloads because it worked fine at Christmas.. I'll try again later - good luck guys! Daniel

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2009
  Daniel:  I had similar issues, it seemed to the be transfer manager app.  It seemed to work when I restarted the app.

• Anonymous
  January 09, 2009
  Steve Ballmer announced during his CES keynote the immediate availability of the Windows 7 beta to TechNet