Microsoft Windows 7 is still in preview stages but has already gained quite a substantial amount of users trying its first beta, if you are willing to try the new beta without taking any risk with your existing computer configuration, installing it on a virtual machine is the best option, the whole process is very safe and takes around 40 minutes to get completed on a decently powered P4 computer.
A virtual machine installation lets you try Windows 7 inside your existing OS as a guest operating-system, Both Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and Sun VirtualBox can be used for this purpose, I will be using Sun VirtualBox for this demonstration.
- Download and install Sun VirtualBox if not already done.
- Download and obtain a license key for Microsoft Windows 7 Beta using instructions provided in the earlier post here.
- Now launch VirtualBox and click the New button to start setting up our Windows 7 virtual machine.