Pirates pleased with Windows 7

The beta release of Windows 7 isn’t just a hit with professional reviewers. It’s also getting a strong response among ordinary users – albeit ones who don’t represent Microsoft’s customer base.

As Jonathan Schaffler wrote a couple of days ago, the beta edition of Vista’s successor has been described by some reporters as “excellent quality”, to the point that it could even be released immediately. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but that any problems would be minor enough that Microsoft could live with any criticism.

The system is also getting strong reviews from users of leading torrent site, where the system is available to (illegally) download. Now it’s worth remembering this specific audience is slightly different to the overall Windows user base. First, these people are keen enough to download a system which has no promise of stability, suggesting they are much more experimental and able to deal with problems than the average user.

Second, there’s a good chance they aren’t actually going to spend any money on a legal version of Windows. That doesn’t mean Microsoft should discount their reactions though – it’s arguable these people will offer even more useful feedback as they’ve downloaded Windows 7 to actually use it in everyday life, unlike most reporters who will only explore the system long enough to write a fair review.

One Mininova user, who you’d expect to be pretty sceptical given the user name ‘LinuxWalker’, wrote:

Are you kidding me? I have a brand new ASUS G71G-A2 It had most drivers installed, the other Vista drivers worked beautifully! CS4 Works, Office 2007 Works, Blu-ray is Awesome Also my laptop has 6GB of RAM and this OS recognizes all of it! This will be my primary OS, I can’t wait for it to be released…

Indeed, the driver problems of Vista seem to have left some users fairly easily impressed. ‘Kruno24’ wrote “Just installed on Acer 8930G and everything is working!!! All vista drivers work!!! Whohoho!”

Windows 7’s performance also gets a thumbs up, with ‘012136663’ noting (forcefully, if not eloquently) that “my new laptop i got at xmas came with vista and was well slow saw this so thought ill give it a try it is so much faster now defo good download.”

And it seems even the memory demands that plagued Vista may not be such an issue.

A user named ‘nire’ commented: “I got it up and running in 30 minutes on a Dell Latitude D600 with 512MB RAM. It’s running pretty smooth! I’m suprised, in a good way.”

Microsoft probably won’t be overjoyed to see so many people effectively stealing copies of the system (12,000 have used this torrent file alone), but the firm should at least be able to take some comfort in users noticing the promised improvements have been delivered.

• Microsoft gets nVidia’s SLi and ATi’s Crossfire working in Vista
• Security firm warns against downloading pirated Windows 7 beta
• Windows 7 free for a year and secure for pirates
• Vista hack allows early downloads of SP1
• Microsoft may be recycling Windows 7 activation keys