By Philip Churchill on January 10th, 2009
WHS Vail and Windows 7 – The Tip Bits
Now that the next major version of Windows Home Server (codenamed Vail) will be available sometime in 2010, it’s time to look at some of the details of Windows 7 the platform that Vail will be based on:
- Only one more release candidate (RC) and then it will be shipping to the customer (RTM).
- RTM will be sometime this year (2009).
- Customers who buy Windows Vista machines as of July 1 2009 will get the appropriate free upgrade to Windows 7 once it ships.
And the differences between Vista and Windows 7 versions are:
- Windows Vista Home Premium – Windows 7 Home Premium
- Windows Vista Business – Windows 7 Professional
- Windows Vista Ultimate – Windows 7 Ultimate
Don’t forget if you would like to have a play with Windows 7 right now, then the current beta is available from:
- Microsoft’s Windows 7 site has it publicly available.
- MSDN Subscriptions or TechNet Plus Subscriptions if you are a subscriber
- Microsoft Connect site if you are an official beta tester
Share this WHS Article with Others:
Only one more release candidate (RC) and then it will be shipping to the customer (RTM).
=> False ! It’s only the beta 1 which have been release this thursday, and after beta 1, what we have ? RTM ? No ! Beta 2, then beta 3 and perhaps beta 4…
2010 or 209, you have both.
Will there be upgrade paths for Vista and XP?
are you sure it will be based on win7?
on the wegotserved forums they say it will be based on server 2008.
i would prefer if it was based on win7, then it would be easier to adapt it to my own needs…
perry, Windows 7 and Windows Server R2 (both in Beta now) are based on the same kernel. So what I think is being suggested is that WHS 2010 will also have the same kernel. Now, I think you are hoping for Win 7 Premium because you are after Media Center. To make a long story short…it shouldn’t be very difficult at all for Media Center to be ported to WHS if they choose to do that. Keep your fingers crossed. I’m going to be curious what they disable in Server 2008 so not to infringe on Small Business Server sales.
Kitty, the RTM date I believe was a reference to Windows 7 and not Windows Home Server “Vail”. As for Windows Home Server v2.0 …it looks like that will ship in 2010.
Boris, you may be right but Microsoft has said its intention is to go from Beta to RC to RTM. You have Not heard anyone at Microsoft call this weeks release, Beta 1. So until I hear otherwise, it is simple “the Beta”.
The upgrade to Windows 7 breaks your computer’s like to your home server. Not a huge deal as it will walk you through reconnecting the client to the server.
I’ve bugged this through the feedback features of the beta, and also plugged getting them to provide built in support for the Windows 7 backup control panel to detect the backup settings of the WHS client. (This may require feature changes in both the client software as well as Win7)
JohnCz and the article are correct. There will be only this Beta, no numbers afterwards and the next release will be normal everyday builds, but will not be made available to the public only RTM partners. The next possible public release will be RC, and there will be only one of those. MS has said that they will no longer run more then one beta and RC for each new OS and application going forward, and they showed this with Vista and with Server 2008(longhorn).
As for WHS, they are very hush hush on what it will comprise, but from my understanding they are throwing a lot of addons ITB, but they can be removed if you find something else that fits your needs better, and also major MAJOR advertising for WHS2. Guess I was right awhile back when I said that the current WHS is a test bed to see how it will fair in public. So far so good, as I have turned 15 people directly to it and they are all running it now, and love it.
I am running the trial version of WHS and I think it’s nice, but the one thing that drives me nuts is the incompatablity with MicroSoft’s OneCare which should go hand-in-hand with WHS. Being a OnceCare user its obvious that they had a Central Backup location in mind when they made this available for up to 3 PC’s, and what better choice than WHS? Someone at MicroSoft needs to get their teams working in the same direction. Right now it’s like two guys paddling a rowboat in different directions going round and round!
Installed Windows 7 over a time period of 48 hours, using an ADSL connection running at 25kb/s.
Installation was pretty smooth but slow, most likely due to a large file content. There is one problem, I cannot use Windows Mail and the promised alternative is not there except for the shortcut in the desktop. Anybody having a suggestion on how to obtain an e-mail program that will work with this OS.?