Computer News and Trends

Say Goodbye to the Vista Disaster

About 3 Years ago, Microsoft unveiled their much trumpeted Windows Vista, OS. It was an industry-wide disaster. There were not only a few bugs, but the entire user experience of Microsoft Windows went from being tolerable to annoying and intolerable. Microsoft touted all of the new, great security features in Windows Vista. What security really meant was that you now had to use your computer with one hand tied behind your back so you couldn't do as much harm to your system. Also, the beautiful user interface with transparent windows, menus and Windows Aero ended up making your computer slow. Most people I knew took off the Windows sidebar after using it a couple of weeks, realizing it didn't offer anything very useful. The Aero task bar feature is a cool effect, but does anyone really use it? Mac has the useful dock-bar on the bottom of the screen. Microsoft tried to duplicate something equally useful and more cool, but nobody was buying it. It quickly became neccessary to put 4 GB of memory in your computer in order to get it to perform as well as an XP Computer with 1GB. The Windows Vista disaster was greatly magnified when PC Makers Dell, HP, Compaq and IBM made the decision to put Vista on all of their pre-sold computers. They soon learned that a great percentage of computer systems buyers would rather have XP.  Microsoft was left doing the rope-a-dope, continually extending the sales life of their Windows XP OS. As a reseller of OEM computers, my own customers were buying Windows XP over Vista at a 10-1 margin. My clients business, end-users refused to try Vista and many of them decided to hold off making any plans for major infrastructure upgrades to their business technology. This was the last thing computer hardware resellers needed in times of such economic despair.
So, we in the computer industry, waited anxiously and most nervously for something new. Windows 7 to the rescue.

Say Hello to Windows 7

Windows 7 was launched rather quickly. Microsoft put together a very aggressive beta testing campaign and many resellers and end-users were getting their first impression of Windows 7 over a year ago. I quickly learned from my most cynical computer resellers, that Windows 7 was really going to fly. Computer consultants, who were normally very skeptical and critical of everything Microsoft does, were praising the improvement in performance and functionality over Vista. Windows 7 does not look vastly different than Vista, cosmetically, but it works! Computer users notice a significant difference in performance and appreciate not having the backseat driver nag-warnings every time they click on an icon. Also, all of their applications seem to run. Windows 7 runs much quicker than Vista. Also, Microsoft has gone back to calling Professional, Professional instead of Business. The Premium, Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise versions of Windows 7 are offered in 32 or 64 Bit versions.
For a handy explanation of all the different versions, see our chart: Windows 7 Versions Chart. 64-Bit users can take advantage of memory above 4 Gigabytes. I highly recommend a system with a 64-bit version of Windows 7 and 8GB of RAM. If you're concerned about application compatibility, Windows 7 has an XP Mode add-on that can be downloaded. You can read about that, here: XP Mode.