Should You Upgrade to Windows 7?

Now that Microsoft has unleashed their latest and greatest upon us, and so far it has had few negative reviews, if any, many users are wondering if they should finally upgrade. A lot of these are individuals that would have upgraded to Vista, but upon hearing of the many issues that Vista had, thought better of it. I have sat on the fence concerning Windows 7 for a while, but think that it is time to provide my own thoughts about the latest operating system.

If you really want to know if your computer can handle Windows 7, Microsoft has a program called Windows Upgrade Advisor that you should use before upgrading from one version of Windows to the latest version. While it may be safe to assume that a computer that runs Microsoft Vista can run Windows 7, a Windows XP, 2000, ME, or 98 user may want to dig a bit deeper to see if their computer can handle Windows 7. The latest operating system from Microsoft has been touted as lean, requiring fewer resources to work and comparable to most distributions of Linux. This is not exactly the case, for example Windows 7 still requires 1 GB of RAM to work. In fact I actually used the Upgrade Advisor and my own computer only has 898 MB of RAM, and Windows suggested that I increase my memory to at least 1 GB for the 32 bit version of Windows 7 and 2 GB for the 64 bit version before upgrading.

If I go into System on my computer it tells me that I have a full 1 GB, but it is best to use the conservative estimate so if you find yourself in a similar situation you may just want to go ahead and get the extra GB, and of course, if you are running less than a GB just buy a GB to put yourself over. It is absolutely ridiculous not to do so unless your motherboard simply will not support an extra GB; you may have to check with your PC manufacturer to find out. The bottom line is that one GB of RAM may cost as little as a few compact discs from the record store, or a movie on a BluRay disc, it isn't a lot of money at all.

A lot of Windows XP users are still running on anywhere from 64 MB to 512 MB of RAM. Windows XP does not have the minimum memory requirements that Windows Vista and Windows 7 need to run efficiently. The minimum requirements for Windows Vista are 512 MB of memory, and Windows 7 requires at least twice that amount. A lot of individuals running Windows Vista that are experiencing issues with the computers performance, are only using twice as much memory that Windows Vista requires. You may want to upgrade your memory before considering paying $119 for a copy of Windows 7. Keep in mind that Windows XP can see at least 2 GB of RAM, so if you are running your computer on less memory you may want to invest in more RAM before upgrading; but see how well the system runs first, 2 GB of RAM is a lot cheaper than a license to run a new operating system.

I would rather spend like $50 to upgrade my RAM and solve my issues that way than to pay for another license. Windows XP users should also keep in mind that there is no convenient way to upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows Vista. Either would require backing up the system as both use an entirely different technology than Windows XP did. Windows XP had more in common with Windows 2000, and had evolved from there, where as Windows 7 bears the same relationship to Windows Vista. If anyone remembers there was no clear migration path between Windows 98, 95, ME and older systems to Windows XP, though there was from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. The same bears true between Windows XP and any newer operating systems.

If you are going to run old Windows XP programs consider how Microsoft's newer operating systems run the old software. In Windows Vista, you can literally tell a program to run itself in a different mode by right clicking on the icon for the program, going into properties, then clicking on compatibility and choosing the OS you want to emulate so that the software runs correctly. Your choices vary between Windows 95, and Windows 2003 service pack 1. Windows 7 does things a little differently though; it uses something called Windows Virtual PC to use Windows XP Mode to run software.

This is the general idea; as in Vista you are supposed to be able to run Windows XP software native, but there is enough of a difference between the two OS that there will be many times that this does not work. Microsoft Windows provides the ability to then emulate an actual copy of Windows XP to run software. Here is the caveat though; you need to download it, and it is only compatible with Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise. So you need to spend at least $199 to get a copy of Windows 7 that can handle this software, and then download the Windows Virtual PC software in order to get full compatibility with older Windows XP software. I probably shouldn't even be telling you this, because if I were working for anyone else, clearly the idea would be to do everything I could to encourage you to buy Windows 7.

One thing novices should know about virtualization is that it takes up a chunk of their RAM and their hard disk in order to run one OS within another. Now the tool that Windows has provided should work a bit better than VM Ware or Sun's Virtual Box because it is made by Microsoft, but there are still considerations; 1.25 GB is the recommendation, so in all truth, if you have legacy apps you will need Professional, Ultimate or Enterprise, and 1.25 GB of RAM to slip by without crashing the computer. If you are wondering, a quarter of a GB of RAM is 256 MB, so you if this is what you are already running your Windows XP on, I would actually suggest maxing out at 2 GB, which for you would be an extra 1.75 GB of ram. Virtualization sounds good in theory, but in reality it consumes your computers resources in ways you may have never considered previously; you are in essence running two copies of Windows at the same time. Anyone who has run Linux inside of Windows (or the other way around) can attest to this fact. In any event the extra 256 MB required on top of the minimum requirements for 7 sounds about right, considering that 64 MB is the minimum required to run XP anyway, but it actually does not truly break through until 256 MB, four times the amount necessary to slip past.

However you need to know this if you are still using older applications that barely work in Windows XP. Microsoft is suggesting that most XP software will run in Windows 7, but then again, they have provided you with a virtualization tool that actually uses a license for Windows XP in the event that the software does not run, and you have to go and download it. In fact on Windows 7, you have to download a lot of what used to ship with Microsoft's older operating systems. Many of these downloads can be found at the Windows Live website. Email is not supported out of the box with Windows 7, you need to go to the Windows Live website to download Windows Live Mail after you are already set up and connected to the Internet. The idea was to make the OS smaller and take programs out of the registry so that Windows 7 boots up faster.

One big difference that I have noticed with Windows 7 is that in the past there used to be a lot of discussion as to what went on under the hood with a version of Windows. That does not seem to be the case this time around; either Windows 7 just works that well that people no longer care about the intricacies of the operating system, or it isn't common knowledge. About all I can say about this is that unless people run into some serious or unique issues with Windows 7, you can expect for it to remain as mysterious as Mac OS is now. Keep in mind that they are already talking about Windows 8 coming out in 2012. Another interesting point of note is that Windows XP market share continues to decline and Windows 7 is expected to overtake Windows Vista by the end of this year ...