Windows 7, a next-generation operating system developed by Microsoft, has released its RTM versions some months ago and it is now also available to the MSDN and Technet subscribers as well as the volume licensing customers. Following the tradition for the computer fans that the latest versions of ISO can be easily obtained from a P2P source, either ed2k or BT torrent, I get my copy of ISO image some days ago. Thanks to the high transfer speed here on campus, I spend about 2 hours for downloading that.
As a end user of Windows 7 like us, especially for us, we have three different routines to get a valid key for our copy:
- Purchase a package directly from Amazon.com, Microsoft.com, or some resellers as BestBuy, etc. But for most users in China, I suppose this won’t be a popular way since the high pricing of that package comparing to the local salary levels. More practically, most valid copies of operating systems are distributed through the channel of OEM, a specially plan for newly sold computers.
- Register an account as the student membership of IEEE or ACM. A MSDN AA account will be awarded when you are submitting a valid application for such organizations. You are entitled to a copy of Windows 7 Professional (Key Only) with the price of 19 dollars annually. Comparing to the reselling price, this is much cheaper. But do remember that you can never try to use this authority for commercial purposes. But unfortunately that due to the numerous of applications that are not holding the valid student identity, this service has been temporarily down.
- Volume License on Campus. It is another efficient way to use the Windows 7, you can connect to a KMS server for activating the system. But it is still unavailable in China.
Once you get the key, you can legally activate the copy of Windows 7 on your computer and use it without any limitation on function. And of course, you can either use some illegal methods for activating, or say cracking. But I won’t discuss it here. For more details, please try Google.
I am planning about to take a tutorial on this new system, then I installed it on my laptop. Everything works properly now, the issue on my Norton product has been successfully solved when updating it to the Norton Internet Security 2010 which perfectly supports Windows 7. But a new problem still occur, that is, there is no compatible client for logging into the campus network. I can hardly understanding why the manufacturer never try to develop and updating their clients keeping the pace with the development of software. And they only develop their clients on Windows. Never expect to logging into their systems with the system other than Windows, such as Mac and Linux.
