Microsoft Corp. last week urged Windows 7 beta testers to return their machines to the Windows Vista operating system before upgrading to the impending release-candidate version of the new software.
Windows 7 Release Candidate, the next milestone for the operating system, is expected to be available sometime next month.
In a post on its Engineering Windows 7 blog, Microsoft asked users to revert to
Microsoft said that bugs or other problems reported while upgrading from one prerelease build to another aren't worth fixing. "We don't always track them down and fix them because they take time away from bugs that would only manifest themselves during this one-time prerelease operation," it said.
Microsoft acknowledged the difficulty that its request poses to users. "We know that means reinstalling, recustomizing, reconfiguring and so on. That is a real pain," it said in the blog.
For Windows 7 beta testers who decline to revert to
Meanwhile, a survey by ChangeWave Research found that the number of Windows 7 beta testers who were satisfied with the operating system was four times higher than that of early users of
In a poll of IT professionals, the market research firm found that 44% of 68 users testing Windows 7 were "very satisfied" with the beta. In a February 2007 ChangeWave survey conducted just weeks after