Developers to get their hands on Windows 7 next month
Contrary to previous speculation, some visitors to a developers gathering next month will get a physical copy of Windows 7. But it’s not necessarily going to be a complete edition of the system.
It’s been known for some time that the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles would be the first official unveiling of the successor to Vista. But recent leaked info said the beta edition would not be ready until mid-December.
A Microsoft blog post has cleared up that confusion by explaining that both stories are true. Delegates will receive “the pre-beta build of Windows 7”, the company doesn’t explain exactly what they mean by that term. Traditionally a beta edition is the first complete and fully-functional edition of a program or system; the producers then make any necessary changes thrown up by testing and feedback to produce the final retail edition.
If ‘pre-beta’ does translate as ‘not finished’, it’s somewhat surprising news: it had appeared Microsoft didn’t want incomplete editions getting widespread distribution because it feared Vista-style negative coverage. That may explain why only “keynote attendees” will get their hands on a copy of Windows 7 rather than it going to everyone at the conference.
Windows 7 is going to be one of the star attractions at the conference (which makes sense given most developers will have to work with it). 22 of the 155 sessions will deal with the system, placing it second only to ‘cloud computing’ as a topic.
Most of the sessions deal with software, so it may be even more important to see how Microsoft deals with Windows 7 at the following week’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. They’ll likely want to get as many manufacturers up to speed as possible because hardware compatibility is likely to be the first thing many critics look at when Windows 7 hits the shelves.
Related Posts:
September 28th, 2008
So basically it will just be an Alpha release. That is a much easier way to say it.