Windows 7 launched on October 22nd and is set to fix all the problems caused by Windows Vista, and it looks as though it is doing a fairly good job of it. I have been trialling Windows 7 on my PC since it’s first beta stage and I must say that I really like it.
The fact that Windows 7 came out so fast after Vista should be a good indicator of how broken Vista is…this is a chart of Windows release dates:
This shows that while the length of time between Windows XP and Windows Vista was 5 years, the length of time between Windows Vista and Windows 7 is only 2 years. Windows Vista had problems from the start (I know because like an idiot, I bought it for over $700 on the day of it’s launch), The current hardware in most computers did not have compatible drivers for Windows Vista, meaning all of your peripherals would not work until a new driver had been made as well as a lot of software no longer worked (including iTunes which crashed instantly) also it had file copy and memory bloating problems. While a lot of this has been fixed now, it was the first couple of months that destroyed Vista as many businesses would not upgrade after the horror stories got out.
Windows 7 is much better looking than Windows XP and is packed with many more feature, such as widgets which sit on your desktop and display information such as weather & RSS feeds, sticky notes which are like virtual post it notes, inbuilt touch support, wallpaper collection display (display a folder of pictures on your desktop and have them rotate at a set time) and an entirely new start and task bar system.
That is not to say that Windows 7 is without problems, I have found that some software still has trouble working correctly and if you open a folder with lots of files, the computer slows down as it tries to scan each one, but these are minor problems and will probably be fixed in a future update…so I would still suggest the upgrade from Windows XP and definitely if you have Windows Vista (especially because you only have to buy an upgrade to go from Windows Vista to Windows 7, which is about half the price)
Windows 7 is now available from all major software retailers (for about half the price of Vista at launch).
*Images from Wikipedia
Chris Thursfield
