Windows 7 actually appears to be worth the upgrade. I got a firsthand account from my roommate, who says it’s combines Vista features with XP efficiency. And for a limited time that upgrade is cheap: $50 for Home Premium and $100 for Professional.
To make it easy on the consumer, each version of 7 has all the features of it’s lesser brethren – no more Home Premium vs. Business vs. Ultimate BS. E.g., since Premium includes Media Center, so does Professional, even though it’s targeted at small business users. Here is a good article comparing the different versions. I think Professional is a pretty clear win (at least for me).
To ease the minds of upgraders, Professional and Ultimate include a fully licensed copy of XP SP3 that runs in a virtual machine. There is one big gotcha, though – not all Intel CPUs support Intel VT (Virtualization Technology), required for this XP compatibility mode. Here is a list of supported (and unsupported) CPUs.
Please comment if you’ve had any luck (good or bad) with Windows 7.
Some of us will have a hard time with this cheap upgrade. I pissed money away on Vista Ultimate, and now have to wait for the Ultimate 7 upgrade release or else do a clean install, since you can’t just hop over to a different version in all cases.
I WILL be upgrading as soon as I can though. I’m one of the Vista haters. I love all the features of Vista, but damn did they go out of their way to make it as non-intuitive as possible.
I tried explaining to my wife, how to make a mp3 CD for her car with her laptop’s version of Vista. Holy crap. There’s a real sense of accomplishment when you actually get it to work. (BTW she had no problem doing this by herself with XP.) But still, how are people with non-techie spouses figuring this stuff out?
I want a personal Accomplishment Award page for Vista so I can show off how quickly I managed to find the little arrow for CD formatting options. Puzzle Solved! Secret Unlocked!
Then explain to your wife why her laptop’s battery is always dead. Sherlock Holmes couldn’t solve this mystery faster. It turns out it was because when she clicks [Start] then clicks on what LOOKS like the power button symbol, the laptop isn’t actually shutting down all the way.
Puzzle Solved! Secret Unlocked!
Another good example is the control panel.
Microsoft – “Here’s a fun idea, lets change the names of some of the icons just for the hell of it. They will still do the same function as they have for the past 15 years, but I just want to see people squirm when their shortcuts aren’t in the same order than their used to. Even in classic view.”
It’s enough to make me consider switching to Apple.
(Okay, now I’m just being silly.)
That sucks about Ultimate, I probably would have bought that, too, but I never dumped XP since it did what I needed. I am hoping the XP -> 7 transition will be easier than XP -> Vista. They’ve done that with some server products like MS Exchange, as they were really motivated to get users off the old stuff. Still, if I upgraded to 7 I think I’d want to add another 2GB of memory (to 4GB) and a second hard drive to install it on. If I had lots of money to burn, I’d pick up an SSD instead of an HD.
I hear Office 2007 is like your Control Panel experience – does everything the old version did, just in a completely different way/place. Probably easier for complete newbies, but how many newbies does Office have? If it ain’t broke, don’t break it.
Yes my work-PC has Office 2007 and you are exactly right. In Word more than anything else, the whole toolbar layout is way different. However unlike Vista, there IS a sense to it. Once you learn the new toolbar “cell block” design, more options are available to you straight from the main screen. It’s just hard on us old fogeys who like having things where I expect them. Also since I have to log into work’s servers from time to time, I must still be competent with 2003 since some servers haven’t made the switch yet. There should be a law about that. Either make the switch 100% company wide or don’t do it at all.