Microsoft Makes It Tough To Upgrade To Win 7 RC From Beta

Unfortunately for those of us who've enjoyed beta testing Windows 7, Microsoft is making life difficult for beta testers to upgrade their copy of Windows 7 to the new release candidate version - and that includes a lot of folks at Microsoft itself.

Microsoft needs feedback from users upgrading from Windows Vista to Win 7, because that's what will happen when Win 7 is indeed released into the wild - it doesn't need data on thousands of beta testers upgrading, it needs data on thousands of Vista users upgrading. So it's fair for Microsoft to recommend that the new build be installed from Vista rather than a current Win 7 beta build, but where's that leave loyal beta testers, including those working on the project at Microsoft?

The Windows 7 blog addresses that question for the millions of people it says are using Win 7 beta as their full-time OS:

Again, we know many people (including tens of thousands at Microsoft) are relying on the pre-release builds of Windows 7 for mission critical and daily work, making this step less than convenient. We're working hard to provide the highest quality release we can and so we'd like to make sure for this final phase of testing we're supporting the most real world scenarios possible, which incremental build to build upgrades are not. At the same time everyone on the beta has been so great we wanted to make sure we at least offered an opportunity to make your own expert and informed choice about how to handle the upgrade.

Read the full post here to find out what hoops you'll need to jump through to upgrade your trusty Win 7 beta to the RC build.

Engineering Windows 7 [Windows 7 Blog]