The Inimitable Have Tex Blog

Windows 7 is now installed on millions of PCs. I have two in everyday use in my business, a desktop that is my workhorse PC, and a netbook that is my travel unit and jack of all trades.

The desktop is fairly powerful, with an AMD Quad Core and 3GB of RAM. I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit loaded on it. I also run XP Mode, which is a full copy of XP Professional running under Virtual PC, and proves useful for running software that Windows 7 will not. I’m not a gamer, but the PC will do everything I ask of it, including photo editing of large images from my DSLR. It’s stable, and the 64 bit operating system seems to have none of the “gotchas” that prior iterations under XP and Vista suffered from. It runs most 32 bit software just fine, and I haven’t had any issues with device drivers.

The netbook is amazing. It’s an Acer, with an Atom N450 processor, and a 160GB drive. It came with 1GB of RAM and Windows 7 Starter Edition. It ran just fine, but I’m a tech, so I updated the operating system to Win 7 Pro, and upped the RAM to 2GB. I find it’s faster than just about any moderately priced Vista or XP laptop, which makes very little sense, except that the N450 has hyperthreading, and Windows 7 makes good use of it. There’s occasionally some video lag, if the machine launches a virus scan, for example. But these bargain basement netboooks are very practical tools. I’ve recommended the same setup to my customers who are road warriors, and the ones who have taken me up on it have been very satisfied.

Now to customer experiences, most have been very good. There’s one area  to watch out for though, desktops that you want to run via wireless adapters. I’ve been unable to find wireless adapters that work with either 32 or 64 bit Windows 7. Laptops have built-in wireless, so they have to work. Getting desktop wireless adapters working are the customer’s problem or mine. Even some All In One/Touchscreen PCs refuse to connect wirelessly. The adapter manufacturers either don’t care, or  their updates haven’t worked. ALL MAJOR BRANDS FAIL THIS TEST, don’t buy a Windows 7 desktop if you’re planning to use it wirelessly.

The only other thing to watch are printers. Some older units don’t have Windows 7 drivers, and for the ones that do, if you want to share them, you need to attach them to a Windows 7 PC. XP and Vista PCs can see printers attached to Windows 7 PCs, mostly not the other way around.

Overall, you can plan to migrate to Windows 7 from XP, and Vista without any major issues. If you need to run older applications, get either Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate, so you can get XP Mode. If you’ve already bought a PC with Home Premium, not to worry, the Anytime Upgrade feature will get you to Professional for about $90.00. I’ve connected Windows 7 PCs to both Server 2003 and Server 2008 networks without issue, and they are well behaved in mixed PC/Mac environments.

Jump on in, Windows 7 is fine!

First a disclaimer, we work on Windows PCs and sell them, so do lots of other people, but be aware of it as you read this article, we’re biased because we use the same software as 90% of the population!

Windows 7 is the best operating system I’ve ever seen coming out of Microsoft. The beta version was much better than the initial release of Windows Vista, heck it was better than Windows Vista AFTER the first service pack. The release candidate was almost flawless, and the version released on Thursday to the general public is superb.

If you’ve been holding onto a Windows XP machine for several years because you refused to buy Vista (perhaps even based on our recommendation) your wait is over. Windows 7 runs well on the latest hardware, a 3 year old PC, and even a 5 year old PC. It runs better than XP on anything with a multi-core processor, and it’s no slouch on a single core machine, as long as it has 1GB of RAM. It will run in 512MB of RAM, even though Microsoft says it doesn’t, but it does bog down a little.

As to compatibility, it runs everything Vista runs, and a few things Vista never did, such as older versions of QuickBooks (pre-2007 versions). If you find something it won’t run, download XP mode, and it most likely will. XP mode is a virtual machine implementation of Windows XP, and it’s available on Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate versions. It works really well, and I have yet to find an XP vintage application that it won’t run. IT even runs Taipei, a Windows 95 vintage game that I admit I’m addicted to!

So go out with full confidence and get a Windows 7 PC, and say goodbye to Vista! A sad chapter in Microsoft history closes as a new better one opens. And for heavens sake, give that pre-2005 vintage XP PC a decent burial, and buy a new Windows 7 PC, there’s only so much the government can do to stimulate the economy – now its your turn!