Windows 7 – to do or not to do?

Windows 7 was released by Microsoft on October 22 but has been on trial at HTG and elsewhere for many months now. It was quickly dubbed by our users as the true successor to Windows XP that Vista never was.

It is not without flaws and a number of features feel incomplete. And I can guarantee that there will be problems that even Microsoft is not even aware of yet. However, I don’t recall a single operating system released by Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) that did not come riddled with more problems than you can poke a stick at during its first release. W7, in our experience, is the least imperfect new operating system we have ever come across.

All new operating systems come with productivity improvements and W7 is no exception. I find the following two features in particular to be appealing:

• The ease of getting access to all my stuff by using Pin and Jump Lists. In addition I can use Windows Search to find a specific file, program, or e-mail instantly.
• The ability to instantly locate and open virtually any file on your PC, from emails to documents to programs and songs, right from the Start menu just by typing a word or two.

The two biggest problems we found with Vista were:

• its incompatibility with a number of applications, especially critical business applications.
• its slowness.

The jury is still out on the incompatibility issue but W7 Pro and Ultimate come with a feature called Windows XP Mode. This allows you to run older XP business software on the W7 PC which gives you some insurance over the incompatibility problem.

Different commentators have offered differing comments on the speed of W7. The majority (and this includes myself) have found W7 to be faster than Vista (and even XP) but by varying degrees depending on the application and the hardware.

So should you adopt W7? Our advice is this:

• If your present PC already successfully runs Vista and you feel that the benefits are worth the cost, then by all means upgrade to W7. However, W7 has been released only very recently. It may pay to sit back and let the early pioneers uncover the Gotha’s. In the next few weeks and months Microsoft and other parties are likely to release fixes and your chances of a pain free migration to W7 will be much better.

I personally do not think that there are sufficient benefits to justify the cost of the licence and the labour to upgrade.

• If your PC is not up to spec, stay away.
• If you are getting a new PC, our general advice is to opt for W7. W7 (Release Candidate version) has been tested here for months now and we are satisfied that for the vast majority of users the benefits outweigh the risks.

By Alan Chew

Managing Director of the Houston Technology Group

This article appeared in the November 2009 edition of the Waikato Business News, for which Alan writes a regular column as "Your IT Adviser".