A report on Windows 7
I had hoped by now to be able to give some personal experiences with Windows 7 release candidate but first my surgery delayed things. Then on returning home, I found that my main PC had a bad motherboard and so it has been in the shop awaiting a new one. That means that my personal experience with Windows 7 is very limited so far. About all that I can say is that it installed in a virtual machine with 1 GB of RAM very smoothly and quickly (about 30 minutes). Virtual machines are slower than running natively so the installation would probably have gone faster on a clean machine.
However, there are many reports about Windows 7 on the Web and I think that it is possible to draw some general conclusions about Windows 7 from them. Here is the way I read the gist of comments I have seen:
- Windows 7 runs faster and better than Vista but not much differently from XP
- Windows 7 has some nice new features but nothing that is compelling
- Although not as heavy-footed as Vista, Windows 7 will still need a fast machine and as much as 2 GB of RAM for best performance
- Many XP drivers will not work in Windows 7 and many peripherals will need updating
- A typical home XP machine will probably not be upgradable to Windows 7
Let me elaborate a little on the last item. Any XP machine that is several years old probably doesn’t have the graphics display memory needed for either Vista or Windows 7. Also many older machines have only 512 MB of RAM or even less. At least 1 GB of RAM is needed for Windows 7 and you’ll be happier with 2 GB. In theory, you could upgrade RAM and add a graphics card but with faster PCs selling for $500 or so what’s the point? Not to mention all the trouble you are going to have with older peripherals. Finally, there is no direct upgrade path from XP; a clean install is necessary.
Those who are most likely to consider upgrading are users who have Vista machines. If you can run Vista, Windows 7 should work fine.
Added later: What I am saying is that owners of older XP machines should not be thinking of upgrading their existing PC but should get a new system when Windows 7 comes out. Or if you are happy with what you have, just keep using your current system.
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Well, i would like to object to the point you wrote about updating the traditionl XP PC to Windows 7, I am currently using a 2.4 Ghz, 728MB Ram and the all the old drivers for XP and they are working superb without and issue right now…!
I am sooo loving Windows 7 right now!