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Windows Vista Beta Expires In 46 Days

Are you still running the beta or release candidate versions of Windows Vista? Well, jeez, buy the full version, ya dope! It’s expiring on June 1, in just 46 days. ComputerWorld details what testers who still haven’t upgraded will have to deal with: hell. See, four facts conspire to make upgrading from Vista beta to Vista final a hassle:

  • You can’t upgrade from an upgrade disk, you need a full version disk
  • You can’t upgrade to a version of Vista to a lesser version of Vista
  • You can’t downgrade from Vista to XP
  • Almost everyone who installed the beta of Vista installed Ultimate

So, if you installed Vista Ultimate beta, you can’t buy an upgrade disk. You can’t buy Vista Home Premium or Vista Business. You can’t reinstall your old copy of XP, then upgrade to retail Vista. So, you’re stuck wiping your hard drive, or buying the full, $400 version of Vista Ultimate. Ouch.

What should you do? Well, if you don’t have the money, take any Vista DVD from a buddy and install it as a trial version. Read around, and you can keep the trial installed for a pretty long time with a few tricks. Use that time to save up to actually buy the damn thing. If you do have the money, buy any upgrade version (Home Premium is the best bet, at $159) and install it twice, using these instructions, or buy a full version from an OEM reseller for pretty cheap.

Good luck!


In other news, Apple has announced its next operating system upgrade, known as Leopard, will be delayed from its expected June launch to October, due to too much work being done on the iPhone. Whoops. Lets hope this stops any more mentions of the Vista delays.

Todd Bishop wonders if Apple plans on issuing free upgrade coupons to those who buy Macs between June and October, like Microsoft did when Vista was delayed. If Apple is smart, it will, because not doing so would alienate a lot of back-to-school buyers.

Oh, and here’s the latest Mac vs. PC ad from Apple:

The response is obvious: A commercial where the Mac is enormously thin, and the PC asks why, and the Mac answers that he has no software to eat.
(via Giz)

April 16th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Vista, Apple, Windows | no comments



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