So we have had the Windows 7 beta for a few weeks now. Its running a little better than vista on most machines, but on the one machine that is important, it has all the features required to make it a winner. Our media PC is now running quietly along recording everything off 2 tuners, one analog and one digital, but with one hooked up to a set top box and the other directly connected to cable using different schedules for each. It is streaming effortlessly to other machines and handling a very large video/image library with panache.
Vista media center has been unable to do this, and we have heard nothing about future upgrades to vista media center that might make us think this is in the works.
This is Microsoft’s chance to keep us media PC pioneers as their customers. Throw out a few new features for media center while its still in beta, let us help get them fixed, and then integrate them in the release candidate. Include some features for those of us (billions of PC users) outside the US that want to use media center.
And then, start a pre-release early purchase option for current beta testers that will allow us to easily flow along to the retail release for a couple of dollars (say $40). We, the early adopters, are your evangelists Microsoft, or at least we could be given half a chance and a solid product. Don’t drop support for the beta in August with a vague retail release date a couple months off. Let us know now that we can invest the time in your product and not have that investment disappear in a few months.
If June/July rolls around and we don’t have something like this, many like me will fire up alternatives to Win 7 media center(many of which exist at this time) on another partition and put the effort into getting them working. You have an opportunity here Microsoft, don’t throw it away.