The most interested users has nevertheless already downloaded the beta version, which has been off the record available through, among other things, Bit Torrent network since then. The preliminary impression is that the beta version is unusually stable and without major errors. At the same time, many believe that Windows 7 does not seem to be more than what Windows Vista should have been from the beginning, with some extra functions as well.

Perhaps the most important news is reduced performance requirements. Windows 7 to run smoothly on the current net books with 1 gigabyte of memory and 1 GHz processor.

- We deliver Windows 7-beta earlier than people had expected, and with higher quality than people had expected. It is a very stable platform and a complete release. It will be the foundation for what we will deliver on the PC, "said Microsoft general manager for Windows, Mike Ybarra, in a press release.

The increasing number of questions now is whether Microsoft will launch Windows 7 before summer. Officially, Microsoft said that Windows 7 will be released towards the end of the year or early in 2010.

One should be careful to use the media that comes with the Windows 7-beta.

Beta version of Windows 7 which is now in circulation (build 7000), after it was leaked in then, is perceived by many as a very stable and without major errors.

But several inform that the Windows Media Player 12, which is the default player for media files in Windows 7, could find to handle MP3 files on a somewhat unfortunate manner. The result is that the first two to three seconds of music on the file will be removed.

According to a posting purportedly from a Microsoft employee in the debate at the forum site Neowin, the problem is related to the editing of meta data to certain MP3 files, specifically those with a header in more than 16 kilobytes.

The problem is made worse by the dog that it also affected the auto-update and fill in the metadata. In Windows Media Player, this feature is enabled by default.

According to Beta News Microsoft is aware of the problem and will make an update available via Windows Update service, when the beta release is to be made officially available, which will happen within a few weeks.