Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor still in beta

As the GA date for Win7 nears, momentum grows, but…

I’ve been trolling the various blogs, the download site, and the news lately to keep up as the final pieces fall into place for the long-anticipated general availability date for Windows 7 on Thursday, October 22 (just a little under two weeks away as I write this blog). I’m seeing evidence of some real progress being made, but I also find myself wondering how close MS will go to the wire on providing some final last-minute materials.

Take the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor as an example. MS updated that tool on September 17, but they haven’t released the final production version yet. I’m wondering how much change there’ll be from the current beta to that version, if any at all. I’m also wondering how long they’re going to wait to make this transition. I’d made a bet with myself that this would occur two weeks prior to GA (yesterday, in other words) but alas I’ve lost that bet as this morning’s check turns up no new versions in the MS Download Center.

The Windows 7 Logo Program finally became publicly visible at the end of September — see Mark Relph’s blog on that subject dated 9/30/2006 — and starts out with pretty good critical mass with over 6000 products that can bear this logo:

Windows 7 Compatible Hardware & Software Logo

But there’s still precious little information publicly available about exactly which hardware items bear this logo, nor can I find anything about logo’d items at winqual.microsoft.com just yet. I guess this will be another piece that falls into place sometime between today and October 22.

The final, final release of Windows XP Mode won’t occur until that day, as Brandon Leblanc posted on 10/1/09 to inform readers about when it would appear for general access in the Microsoft Download Center. Perhaps this is a harbinger of what’s ahead: dead calm for the next little while, then everything hits the ‘net on 10/22. No wonder Microsoft uses Akamai to help it with downloads — despite their many data centers and formidable infrastructure, there’s no way one company can handle the millions of downloads that will begin on October 22.

Stay tuned. You can be sure more is coming, if only on (or not until) “GA Day!”

New Beta Release of Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Posts

In poking around the MS Download Center, I observed that Microsoft posted a new, but still-beta version of the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (9/17/2009). Having run it on a couple of desktops and another pair of notebooks, I don’t see any obvious or even visible differences or changes to this program vis-a-vis the version that appeared in the download center on or about June 15. Given that we now have less than a month to go to reach the Windows 7 GA (general availability) date on 10/22/2009, I’m curious to know when this tool will change from beta to released status.

Drat! I’d kind of hoped that would happen yesterday or today. I’ll keep an eye on this, and let you know when that status changes. In the meantime, this tool does the job reasonably well. You can also visit my “guided tour” of the previous version dated 6/22/2009. Because this tool shows no obvious or apparent changes, it should still give you a pretty good idea of what this latest version of the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor can do, and how it works!

Startup screen for the Win7 UA