Windows 7: What’s The Big Deal?
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Q: What makes Windows 7 better than Vista or XP? – Jacob
A: Windows 7, the long awaited replacement for the much maligned Windows Vista is due to be released on October 22nd (although many custom-build computer shops like ours are already delivering Windows 7 systems). The reasons for considering an upgrade to the new OS are numerous, but the reality is that at some point most users will have no choice.
No matter how much users like Windows XP, there will come a time when Microsoft won’t support it, including the very important security patches that plug security vulnerabilities. With this in mind, the Windows 7 question isn’t really a question of WILL you upgrade, but WHEN will you upgrade — a month, a year, five years?
By all accounts, Windows 7 is a significant improvement over Windows Vista, primarily because Microsoft got to strip out the bad and add lots of new good to what is essentially Windows Vista 2. (But they knew better than to call it that!)
Regardless of how it got here, Microsoft listened to the complaints of Vista users and continued to improve the built-in security and the combination has created a pretty solid operating system.
Here are some of the major improvements:
It actually requires less hardware than Windows Vista. For those of us that have been around since Windows 1.0, we were shocked to learn that Microsoft didn’t ratchet up the hardware requirements like it has with every previous version. Systems light on power that struggled to run Windows Vista will likely run better with Windows 7 (you will even see lots of Netbooks running Windows 7 shortly, which would be unimaginable for Vista).
A kinder, gentler and more flexible UAC (User Account Control). In Windows Vista, the UAC feature was so over-bearing (remember the humorous ‘accept or deny’ Apple commercials?) that many users simply turned it off, which disabled one of the best features that made Vista much more secure than Windows XP. In Windows 7, you can decide where and how this very useful and powerful tool is implemented (a great way to control what the kids can and cannot add to the system).
With the sneaky malicious software that is plaguing the Internet at the moment, this updated version of the UAC is just what most consumers and small businesses need to fight the malware battle.
Faster boot times. The goal from the engineering side at Microsoft was to target a 15-second startup time, which may or may not be possible for everyone (your start time will have more to do with what you install), but, by all measures, the tech community agrees that 7 boots faster than Vista.
Easier home networking setup. Anyone that went through the nightmare of trying to integrate a Vista system into an existing Windows XP network will appreciate this improvement.
Better support for multi-monitor configuration. If you haven’t experienced the joy of having dual monitors installed on your home or office computer, you are really missing a huge improvement in productivity (add it to your holiday wish list; you will thank me for it!) Windows Vista was pretty picky about what it would support, whereas Windows 7 has wider support for different video cards coexisting in the same computer for a dual display configuration.
There are a whole host of other improvements such as auto-sizing side-by-side windows, consolidated and clearer security messages, Taskbar previews that are actually viewable, and control over those irritating balloon notifications in the bottom right corner that make Windows 7 worth considering.
At the end of the day, if what you are using is working fine, don’t be in a huge hurry to fix what ain’t broken. However, if you are struggling with security, stability, or performance, Windows 7 may be just what the doctor orders!
Ken Colburn
Data Doctors Computer Services
Data Doctors Data Recovery Labs
Data Doctors Franchise Systems, Inc.
Weekly video tech contributor to CNN.com
Host of the award-winning “Computer Corner” radio show
9 Comments
leftystrat
October 16th, 2009
at 6:17pm
Notable that the positive points were made relative to Vista.
Aside from your excellent point about eventual lack of support, I can’t find a reason to downgrade from XP.
system001
October 19th, 2009
at 8:26am
lefty i am assuming that you are a typical american. americans hate change in any form, and they hate to change their opinions even more. even xp had it’s bumpy road when it was first released, not as bumpy as vista pre sp1 but bumpy none the less. once sp1 came out for vista most of vistas problems were fixed. now we have win 7 which is far, far improved over either xp or vista. i have been running 7 since the prebeta and can tell you for a fact that xp cannot hold a candle to 7. in no way is 7 a downgrade from xp.
Mohamed Elsherif
October 19th, 2009
at 9:41am
Excellent article, and great brief review, Windows 7 has gone the hard way of creating the perfect OS for everybody with almost no compromises, you can run Windows 7 on the highest end laptop and get the awesomeness of it with very high DX11 performance for games, on the other hand you can run Windows 7 on very limited resources notebooks and you still get the snappy behavior and the great networking capabilities especially in searching and joining wireless network, and the most important sleep & wake up scenarios.
I wish all Win XP users give Win 7 their best shot, and stop using the 8 years old OS, which in internet years means a centuary
shihonage
October 19th, 2009
at 12:12pm
Right now, Vista SP2 is actually more compatible/functional than Windows 7.
Both are resource hogs, however, far above that of XP, and, as article shows, offer absolutely no improvements over it in any form.
It’s change for the sake of change. New incompatibilities, spending money on new hardware, new “adventures” of that sort. For no reason whatsoever.
jpoliti
October 19th, 2009
at 1:03pm
Can anyone give me peace of mind that Windows 7 is compatible with Windows Tablet PC/XP for an upgrade? I’m perfectly happy with my machine the way that it is. In the past I had to uninstall SP3 for XP when it disabled the digitizer on my tablet. I skipped Vista out of the same concern. Is there a Windows Tablet PC V.7?
leftystrat
October 19th, 2009
at 8:28pm
Didn’t anybody ever tell you that stereotyping is not nice and what happens when you assume?
Why should I purchase new hardware to run a prettier OS? I don’t need a prettier OS. I don’t want resources to go to a GUI; I’d like them to go to processing. The author of the blog has stated not to fix what ain’t broken.
Btw, I have discovered that Windows tends to work best as a virtual machine. XP behaves much better as a VM under linux, as do the Server products under ESX 3.5 (same thing).
I’ll be happy to report on 7 after I try it (in a VM).
iminneed
October 20th, 2009
at 10:19am
All are great comments, I get to play with just about every OS out there, I viewed Vista as I did Windows ME, just a pit stop and it’ll be forgotten like BOB; it took years for Win 98 to die even after XP had been out, it will take a while for XP to die also.
Win7 is not a bad OS, just different. I’ve had the opportunity to install the release code on a few different platforms, I was very impressed that it found all drivers for two different laptops directly off the DVD (64 bit) and on one laptop which was just release a month ago I had to go to the MS update site for one driver but it found the rest.
Most MS installs you need to go to the manufacture to get the drivers just to load the network. Of course because it is Vista patched a lot of the drivers are already in place for current hardware. I’ll give MS credit on this one, they actually listened to the end users and fixed what was bad in VIsta - which was bad, only OS I ever installed and removed withing a week because it was so horrid.
You can try it free for 30 days if you install it and just don’t put in the key, Hard drives are cheap, go get yourself a $50 hard drive on New Egg install it and play see for your self. Just my 2 cents to the mix.
sean
October 21st, 2009
at 10:08pm
xp doesn’t use as many resources as 7…. um….who cares? what is the point? xp does not run as well on CURRENT hardware. if you have older hardware, DUH! ! you don’t need to run out and get 7. but if you want to make use of current hardware, 7 beats the tar out of xp. it is really annoying to hear people talk about 7 offering no improvements over xp… that is a comment from someone that has not used 7 and just wants a reason to feel good about their decision to continue using their old box… i have an old box too, and guess what. i am not putting 7 on it. that is what my newer laptop is for. and i love it WAY better than xp. stop bashing 7 because you don’t need it for whatever it is you do.
blah blah black sheep
October 24th, 2009
at 11:58am
Is Win7 a good product? Yes. I use it on a netbook that it came on. Works great.
Will I spend money to upgrade my other comps (XP & Vista) to it? No. There isn’t any new, super features or what-not that impress me enough to justify the cost expenditure.
I got Vista on a comp I bought, and it was horrible until the SP’s came out. With the SP’s, though, it’s better, so no reason to upgrade.
XP is on an older comp, and “just works”. Like Joel Spolsky said, people have this weird notion that software “rusts” or something the older it gets. On the contrary, older software is better…it’s had all the bugs worked out. New software is still in need of improvement.
Eventually, we will move from XP to Win7, but not until I have to. I moved from Win95 to 98 only when I bought a game that no longer worked with 95. I made a commitment to myself never to buy another Windows upgrade/install ever again, though. I just use the ones I get on used comps I buy. Eventually, if I get to the point where I HAVE to upgrade XP, I’ll just install Linux on it instead of buying a new Win OS.
While I think Win7 is an out-standing product, I personally think it should have been released for free to Vista customers as SP3 as an apology for how bad Vista was to start.
The innovation curve is starting to flatten out, so MS will eventually just foist subscription service onto everyone … pay us $10 / month to use our OS, and you get all the updates & patches we hand out. They’re to the point of releasing a new OS in order to boost profits, not because there’s anything incredibly innovative going on. Sure, they rebuilt a lot of Vista from the ground up, but for Joe Average there wasn’t any noticeable difference from XP other than driver issues, update nightmares (if you got a black screen while updating, you’d think the comp locked up, so rebooting would hose up the update and you’d have to reinstall the OS), etc, etc.
Win7 isn’t different enough from XP to warrant non-techie people popping $100-200 to upgrade their comps, especially since they’ve finally gotten their XP comps setup the way they like them. By making XP people INSTALL FROM SCRATCH, MS totally tossed a wrench in migrating folks off XP.
Oh well. I think Win7 is awesome. But not justifiable at this time. Too little too late.