Adam L asked: I’ve seen loads of videos on Youtube on windows 7 and I can’t wait for it to come out, and I wondered if anyone new the release date.

YellowSnow asked: I’m running vista and am trying to upgrade to windows 7 beta, but am wondering how to complete save my computer as is, before in case the beta of windows 7 is flawed.
So, I want to have a back up of programs docs basically everything in case i need to revert to vista.

gogogo asked: i have windows vista 64 bit, HP
im planning on downloading the build tommorow from microsoft
but i want to partition it and make WINDOWS 7 beta, my primary OS
“till the deadline”
Is the amount of space i allocate to the partition the amount of space i have to play with while im on that [...]

Cully W asked: I have lost my password for my administrator account, can I install Windows 7 over Vista and have all of my files, and administrator privelages?
I cannot create another partition, I do not have Admin Privelages!

We’ve come a long way in engineering Windows 7 since we first provided an engineering preview of Windows 7 and the work we are doing to support the touch interface paradigm back at the D: All Things Digital conference .? We chose to kick-off the discussion about engineering Windows 7 with touch scenarios because we know this is a long-lead effort that requires work across the full ecosystem to fully realize the benefit.? For Windows 7, touch support is engineered by building on our advances in input technology we began with the TabletPC work on Windows XP.? Touch in Windows 7 requires improvements in hardware, driver software, core Windows user experience, and of course application support.? By having this support in an open platform, consumers and developers will benefit from a wide variety of choices in hardware, software, and different PC form factors.? Quite a few folks have been a little skeptical of touch, often commenting about having fingerprints on their monitor or something along those lines.? We think touch will become broadly available as the hardware evolves and while it might be the primary input for some form factors (such as a wall mounted display in a hospital, kiosk, or point of sale) it will also prove to richly augment many scenarios such as reading on a convertible laptop or a “kitchen PC”.? One of my favorite experiences recently was watching folks at a computer retailer experience one of the currently available all-in-one touch desktops and then moving to another all-in-one and continuing to interact with the screen—except the PC was not interacting back.? The notion that you can touch a screen seems to be becoming second nature rather quickly.? This post is our first dedicated blog on the subject. This is a joint effort by several people from the touch team, mostly Reed Townsend, Dave Matthews, and Ian LeGrow. -Steven Windows Touch is designed to enhance how you interact with a PC.

The Windows Explorer has evolved by enabling you to find all sorts of content by searching for it. Many of you have used the search features in Windows Vista (based on our instrumented data) from the start menu or from the search box in Explorer. It has been a long time since most of us could remember where everything is by carefully managing our folder hierarchy and finding things based on file name alone.? We often rely on domain specific search (in music players, mail clients, photo clients) but with Windows Vista and Windows 7 we make it possible to search within a namespace and across namespaces.? This post is about a new feature based on Search that allows searching across PCs and even servers in an Enterprise setting.? Alwin and Scott, program managers, and Brandon, a developer, on the “Find and Organize” feature team authored this post

Corey Bryant asked: I wanted to try out the Beta of Windows 7 that Microsoft was offering, but didn’t have time – I have my own key, I just need the install files. Where can I get them? Is there any 3rd party sites hosting these files, that anyone knows about?
Thanks!

coppertop asked: I am downloading it in parts from megaupload and I have more than one cd. I have 10 cd-rs and I want to know if I can boot windows 7 in parts?

The Unknown asked: On my Windows 7 Beta, it says the copy expires July 1, 2009 at 6:59 PM. However, on the Microsoft site, it says that it expires on August 1, 2009. Does anyone know why theres a conflict here? I’ve also looked at many screenshots of it and they also have July.

Here’s a behind the scenes look at the design of the Aero Snap feature in Windows 7.? We thought it would be fun to take a look at the overall design process of the feature and the tools and techniques used.? This feature poses a unique design challenge in that you just use the feature without any user-interface specifically to invoke it.? As with all features this is a collaboration across all of our engineering disciplines.? For this post, Stephan Hoefnagels, a Senior UX designer, presents the design perspective.? –Steven (P.S., keep an eye out on the Microsoft MIX conference this week!) In Managing Windows windows and Follow-up: Managing Windows windows we talked about, and you shared, some interesting window management scenarios that we might address in Windows 7. We also touched on some data around typical configurations, as well as goals that guide our thinking in this area. In this post we’d like to have a closer look at the Aero Snap feature that many of you have already been able to experience in our PDC builds, and of course the Beta.