Windows 7 are the Gremlin's gone?

It's been a long time coming, but on October 22nd Windows 7 will officially be released to the public! It's a long time coming because the release of Win7 comes 3 days shy of Windows XP's 8 year anniversary. Yes that's 8 years ago! If computers were cars, that would be like Toyota keeping the Camry relatively unchanged for nearly 40 years!



The car pictured here is the 1969 Toyota Crown, imagine if the only changes to this car since it's release in 69 was airbags, anti-lock brakes and an FM radio to go along with the AM it came standard with. Time for an upgrade right? Well not quite 2 years ago Microsoft released Windows Vista and as long as I'm on this whole cars as comparison kick here's what I think Vista was like...



The 2000 Ford Excursion. Yes in car years Vista is a decade old. Now for my real reasons for comparing it to this behemoth; Simply put, both are gas guzzling lumbering monsters. The Excursion could weigh in as much as 9200lbs, a 2000 Camry 3100lbs! Vista was dog slow when it was released, and like an Excursion with a suburbanite at the wheel it crashed often and without warning.

Nearly three years later Microsoft seems to have gotten it right this time.

• It's fast, I can easily install it on 4 year old hardware without bringing that computer to it's knees. Windows 7 runs on pretty much anything with at least 1GB of RAM and a 1GHz processor. Granted I wouldn't suggest running it on a 1GHz processor but my netbook with a 1.6GHz Atom processor and 2GB of RAM runs it as (if not faster) than it ran Windows XP.
  
• It's slick, the new Windows 7 interface does take some getting used to, but once you do things actually make sense, the pretty is now useful instead of just eye-candy to distract you from the underlying faults. Changes to the interface facilitate working faster and not hunting for the way to make something happen.
  
• It's compatible, When Vista came out tons of old XP software got left for dead. With Windows 7 everything that worked in Vista pretty much still works, amazingly enough a lot of old XP software works too. On top of that several versions of Windows 7 offer an XP virtual desktop, this virtual machine allows you to run a full version of Windows XP within Windows 7, so if you just can't seem to tear yourself away from that 10 year old copy of Myst, or your 7 year old version of Quickbooks fear not you can still run it!
  
• It's 64 bit, yes lots of versions of Vista came standard with 64-bit versions of Windows but I couldn't tell the difference, and drivers were ridiculously hard to find. With Windows 7 I was able to find all the drivers for my computer 8 months ago! While Windows 7 was still in Beta testing I was able to find stable up to date 64-bit drivers for everything from my video card to my iPhone. With widespread availability of fully 64-bit systems we should all see a nice bump in performance. Some of my programs open nearly twice as fast as they did running in 32-bit environments.
  

So the big question now is, are there any cons? There are a few and I'll try to be as candid as possible with them. There will probably be a bigger list of cons then those pros I just listed but keep in mind that this entire list of cons are really all niggling details.

• A lot of Vista's "improved" changes carried over to 7. Networking, display properties, power settings, and the control panel all still take close to twice as many clicks to perform the same task as XP.
  
• There will be a lot of software from the early XP days that just won't work outside the Virtual Machine.
  
• Older printers and scanners especially will find themselves out in the cold.
• There are still far too many distinct versions of the software! XP had 2 to start and ended with 3. Windows 7 has 4. For most users though I'll recommend either Home Premium or Professional. The major difference between the two being that Professional adds the Windows XP Virtual Machine.
  
• Even though I said you could install it on old hardware there are a lot of computers still out there with just 512MB of memory. I recommend 2GB-4GB for best performance and 1GB is the minimum.
• Older video cards won't get to take advantage of all the pretty transparencies of Windows 7.
• Windows 7 like previous versions sold without a new computer are very expensive. Purchasing a new version of Windows 7 Home Premium will set you back $199.99, Professional will cost $299.99. The upgrades are a little better at $119.99 and $199.99 respectivly but you must either have Vista currently installed or have your original Windows install disk available. System Restore disks WILL NOT work.
  
• Lastly and perhaps most importantly is that if you're moving from Vista to Windows 7 the upgrade process is fairly easy allowing the program for the most part to install over Vista leaving all of your music, pictures, videos and applications working as before (a backup is still strongly recommended). Everybody running XP though will be forced to backup their data and install 7 from scratch, reinstalling all of their programs and migrating data to the new OS.

Computer Mechanix, Inc. is planning to help users upgrade to Windows 7 by offering the software below our own cost or even for free! Make sure to check out Microsoft's Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to determine if you're currently capable of making the change. If you don't have enough memory or need a bigger hard drive we can help you with those upgrades for the price of materials only during the upgrade process!

If you are currently running Windows Vista and would like us to upgrade you to Windows 7

• Full version of Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit or 64-bit for $99.99!
  
• Full version of Windows 7 Professional 32-bit or 64-bit for $139.99!

If you are currently running Windows Vista or Windows XP and would like us to install Windows 7 from scratch without saving any data or reinstalling any programs.

• Full version of Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit or 64-bit for $49.99!
  
• Full version of Windows 7 Professional 32-bit or 64-bit for $89.99!

If you are currently running Windows Vista or Windows XP and would like us to install Windows 7 from scratch while saving all of your data and/or all of your compatible programs.

• We'll give you your choice of Windows 7 for FREE!!

Once again, check out Microsoft's Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to determine if you're currently capable of making the change. If you don't have enough memory or need a bigger hard drive we can help you with those upgrades for the price of materials only during the upgrade process!

If you have any questions or would like to schedule an appointment in Buncombe County fill out our appointment form, send us an email contact@computermechanix.com or call us at 828-281-4379 today!