July 23, 2009, 1:22 PM — I admit surprise that Windows 7 is on track to ship this October in time for holiday shopping and end of year tax purchases. Last year, I would have bet money this would not happen. But the more I read about Windows 7, the more I am convinced it may wash the bad taste of Vista away.
The question for many, including me, is Windows 7 RTM: Is It Better Than Vista? Frank Ohlhorst says it is, and he's a trustworthy guy. He says the new and updated features will take a fat book to cover in depth, and several authors I know are typing fast fast fast to get those books on the shelves this fall to take advantage of the Windows 7 rollout hoopla.
Two details caught my attention. First, Microsoft spokespeople say this is the first Windows operating system that didn't suggest a doubling of system resources to support. The requirements for Windows 7 are the same as for Vista, meaning Windows 7 is mostly Vista. That's not a surprise, because every Windows is mostly the Windows before it, just like Ubuntu 9 is mostly Ubuntu 8 and OpenSuSE 11 is mostly OpenSuSE 10 and so on.
Reports say performance is better than Vista, depending on your test, but mostly the same in many areas. As we've seen here the last few days, many are using Windows 7 on a netbook and get acceptable results. Once Microsoft pulls the debugging code out of Windows 7, it may improve slightly, at least in a few areas.
The other detail that bothers me is that there is no official way to upgrade an XP system to Windows 7. Officially, since XP is so old, hardware running XP can't support Windows 7. Realistically, many newer systems purchased over the last two years that can run Vista and therefore Windows 7 were “upgraded” to XP. Microsoft should provide a way to check hardware and upgrade in place if the hardware supports it. That said, look for utilities to do that from third parties fairly soon.
Kudos to Microsoft for reaching the last real milestone to shipping Windows 7 in October as promised. Let's hope Vista joins Clippy, Bob, and Windows ME as aberrations and become distant memories as we all enjoy Windows 7.
My recommendation remains to wait until April or so if not the first Service Pack before installing Windows 7 on anything except brand new systems that have it preinstalled. Windows 7 may ship on time, a rarity, but Microsoft history strongly suggests to let brave souls with an IT department bigger than yours find the potholes and let Microsoft pave them over before you drive fast down that road.
