If you are someone who works on a computer a lot, or maybe you’re a techie “nerd”, then the question in your mind right now is should I upgrade to Windows 7?
The answer may be simple… if you are currently running Windows Vista, then my suggestion is YES! I’ve always been one of these people that go out and get the new operating system within a few days of it’s release. I just like it, I love new technology, being on the “cutting edge” – just jumping in and experiencing new stuff. I did the same thing when Windows Vista came out, in fact, I went the day of the release. What a disappointment!
I tried to give it time to improve – I blamed it on the built in search indexing, etc. – but it never got any better. You undoubtedly know about the security pop-ups, so many that most people disabled the “User Account Control” all together, thus defeating a lot of the security benefits of the upgrade. Then there was the software incompatibility issue. Software that was essential to do business was not compatible, now I know that most of you will say that is what you will get when you are an early adopter, so I’ll let that one slide.
Memory usage on Vista stunk as well, mainly because of the new “Aero” interface and graphics. The more applications that I had running at the same time, the more that the “Desktop Window Manager” process would consume in memory! At one point I seen it consuming upwards of 350meg of RAM, just to get the “pretty look”. So of course, I disabled Aero, which helped with the memory usage but disabled one of the prime new features of Vista. The one thing however that was so bad that it made me grow to resent the operating system altogether was the speed, or lack there of.
Vista is very sluggish, very slow when compared to Windows XP. Simple tasks take longer to complete. Opening a simple video file will sometimes take up to 20 seconds for it to start playing. Application launching is dramatically slower than XP. That was the nail in the coffin for me, something that I just could not overlook, something that got under my skin in a major way. However, the process to downgrade back to XP was a pain, and something that I just didn’t have time to deal with – so I stayed on Vista.
Then along came Windows 7. Let me make something clear, I don’t download Release Candidates or Beta versions of operating systems for prime time use… I’ll download them and install them virtually in VMWare as a way of testing it, testing compatibility, and developing software to be compatible with the release – but never just to use it. That all changed with the Windows 7 Release Candidate though.
It worked so well, that I decided to install it over Vista on my live Windows box, and that is exactly what I did. I have been using it for nearly 6 months now, and I have developed a few ideas about it:
- Not a lot of new features – the most notable feature would be the ability to “pin” applications to the start bar, a cheap way of trying to get closer to Mac’s dock bar. It’s useful, but it’s not Mac’s dock bar.
- User Account Control is much better – no more security pop-ups every time you click something, it actually works now.
- Stability – keep in mind that I’ve been on a “Release Candidate”, that means it isn’t the final release, and it has been much more stable than Vista. When I do have an app that has hung, I can easily kill it without it locking the entire box.
- Application compatibility is better – but that may be because it is compatible with everything Vista is compatible with and Vista done with through all of the headaches in that department. Most app that anyone would want to run was made Vista compatible already, so this is really a non-issue, not necessarily a improvement to “7″.
- Memory usage issues seem to be gone – no memory hogging Desktop Manager process – so a big A+ here.
- Speed – not going to say it is faster, what I want to say is that it works like it should – as Vista should have, but didn’t. In comparison to Vista, it flies, but in comparison with XP it is close. Overall though – a big A+ on this one.
My real thoughts about Windows 7 is that it really feels like a Windows Vista Service Pack! Not a huge bunch of new features, really just fixes to what is broken in Vista. Sure they added some new things, the new “Home Group” networking for home networks – which I haven’t used at all because I only work on corporate networks – but there was no huge “throw a party” new features.
But… with all of the above words and ramblings… if you have Vista, and it feels “sluggish” or “slow” to you, I would probably go ahead and do the upgrade because you will definitely notice the different speed wise.
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
You seem very knowledgable about this issue and it shows. Trust all your future posts turn out as well. Cheers!