I must say I was a little worried about trying a new OS. It had only been out for a mere few weeks and the recent backlash Microsoft got from Vista didn’t really boost my confidence but the reviews around have been good so I decided to take the plunge for the better of my business and customers. I decided to install the 64 bit version as opposed to the 32bit windows xp I currently had in place. I wanted to take advantage of extra memory I could utilize and the performance increase with a 64bit processor. Everything worked so well on my 32bit operating platform and I have been an avid user of windows since its inception way back in the beginning at the Windows 95 so I braced myself for the what was going to happen next.
A QUICKER ISTALL
Windows 7 is a big time saver. Unlike XP which needs SATA drivers for the hard drive to be recognized, Windows 7 did not. During the install I noticed very few pop up questions from beginning to end and there was no need to do any special configuration or answer any questions that were askedlike a pop quiz on anxp or vista install.
The whole install process was very clean, super fast and well under 25 minutes as opposed to 45 minutes for XPand an hour for vista.
I finished theinstallation and encountered no problem. I found all the essential drivers to make peripherals like my printers to work. The problem with XP is that sometimes it has trouble finding specific drivers and some had to be installed manually but with window 7 it was short of effortless.I must mention that my computer is about 5 years old - not the latest and greatest unit but it did not have any issue with the shift to windows 7. It was like a hand to glove fit. For those switching, just make sure you have the minimum requirements for your system
The only issue I had was the pre-installation work and time consuming process of backing up data and reinstalling all my programs. This was the one disadvantage that I encountered moving from XP to Windows 7. Also, Windows xp does not have an upgrade path to windows 7 so you must do a fresh install though upgrading from vista to window7 has an upgrade option available.
PROS AND CONS
Drivers are either built in or are downloadable from windows update servers – for instance I had a printer that was 10 years old, and a scanner which was even older but I was able to get those drivers and install both on my new windows 7 install without a hiccup. There’s no need to spend money needlessly by buying a peripherals that are OS compliant. This huge improvement is due to the fact that most drivers for these devices are on windows server and they now offer many more drivers. In the past ie vista and xpdrivers would only be on the os itself so this not only reduces the size of Windows 7 but increases its performance.
As far as the advantages are concerned, I noticed a smoother and faster computer right from the start I would guess 20 percent although I will be benchmarking results at some point but it’s noticeable.
Windows 7 offer 64-bit support for latest processors and software.
Windows 7 turned off speed sapping processes when not in use as my Bluetooth device was turned off and other background services.
Windows 7 uses less memory and processor than vista and about the same as xp but more efficiently
Also the sleep mode that resumes and reconnects my network which is a big energy saver.
A rather nice feature is the readyboost. I plugged in my usb flash drive and when the memory runs low it will store the data on this drive as opposed to virtual memory which is much faster.
Another nice feature is the performance index that I ran to let me know where my computer can be improved and a rating is given for memory,hard drive,cpu,graphic etc.
Some notable features of windows 7 that I thought brought me into the new century are:
Jump lists - Allowed me to see what I have previously opened or looked at and right click to re-acess them.It’s a huge timesaver
Snap and shake
Snap to resize
Shake to grab a single window and also to make them reappear when finished
The new windows search is fast and very accurately found what I was looking for very much improved from xp
My favourite is the taskbar. It’s so flexible so powerful pin programs, see thumbnail view of opened programs, websites etc, really nice and a huge timesaver.
One other notable favourite if I had the money would be to get a touch screen windows 7 features touch and you can control your whole computer by way of your fingers…cool
There are more features but in conclusion, I have been using 7 for about 6 weeks now any have had no issues to speak of. Just like with anything new there is a learning curve with many new features to explore but Microsoft has done a great job to simplify the task for the user. My experience so far has been shockingly uneventful problem wise but great learning wise. I do have to say I would hesitate to install this operating system immediately for my business customers but might recommend it for home users it’s pretty early but has been a perfect 10 so far. So hasta la vista, so long xp and hello 7 I think microsoft might have hit a home run. Ill keep you posted!
Best Regards,
Gary Cox
Upgrade IT Computer Solutions
www.upgradeit.ca
sales@upgradeit.ca
647-891-4884
