Revealed: The real reason Windows 7 is great

Bazza Man said on Friday, 06 November 2009

So how does this killer aspect of Win7 compare with various versions of Linux?

David said on Friday, 06 November 2009

Randall, your reasoning would be sound except for one fact.
80% of all those people who use windows 7 wouldn't have a clue about memory management or footprint or any other tech jargon attached to your argument
You see this is why vista got such a bad rap, because you tech journo started talking language that really nobody but yourselfs could understand.
No the real killer for me is the task bar switcher, to be able to switch between 2 open applications without resorting to the maximise and minimize buttons but surely save time over the course of a long day.
In other words Windows 7 killer feature is how much more efficent it is with regards to work than any other versions of windows.

sMMM said on Saturday, 07 November 2009

"sticking with Windows XP - ostensibly because it is less bloated and performs better - is a fool's errand."
What about if I stuck with my 9-yrs old dual-core Xeon Dell Workstation running XP? Sometimes I think the only reason we have OS upgrades is for you folks to find something to write about.

Cyteck said on Sunday, 08 November 2009

Hi sMMM,

YES! Its very easy to end up being 100% cynical about Microsoft and windows upgrades. I'm pretty cynical myself too but I have an 8 year old DELL Precision 330 workstation that was previously running XP with SP3 plus many many patches & fixes (it was very bloated I can tell you but it ran nicely) with a large collection of applications. I recently migrated to windows 7 Pro on the same hardware and it was definitely worth all the effort too. Windows 7 pro is MUCH MUCH leaner and runs MUCH better than XP did previously. I am very happy with windows 7 its more than a cosmetic face lift over Vista. Windows 7 is worth the effort involved to upgrade or migrate and the benefits are pleasing.

David said on Monday, 09 November 2009

Hi sMMM, just a suggestion, don't let other people (tech Journalist) influence your (consumer) opinion just by what they write. As Cyteck has correctly stated it is easy to be cynical because of this.
My Advice would be to grab the RC (trial version) of windows 7, put it on a second computer, or on a partitioned hard drive and form your own judgement.
I, like Cytech have had positive result when running windows 7 over other versions of windows (vista) and i think you would to.
But as I've said this is only our opinions and nobody else's, your's will be the important one for you.
You either like it and buy and install it,
or you don't like it and leave it alone and continue with XP.
It really is that simple.

FatCat said on Monday, 09 November 2009

@David
"No the real killer for me is the task bar switcher, to be able to switch between 2 open applications without resorting to the maximise and minimize buttons"
You mean like alt-tab does in XP?
@Cytek
"I recently migrated to windows 7 Pro on the same hardware and it was definitely worth all the effort too."
Since installing/uninstalling software over time slows down PC's, I wonder if you would have got the same result if you had simply re-installed XP.

Michael Gamble said on Monday, 09 November 2009

But do I need a better PC than my existing XP-based Compaq Presario to make Windows7 a viable entity?

Ian said on Monday, 09 November 2009

"It means that, as customers invest in new PC hardware, they'll be better positioned to reap the improvements in CPU, memory, and chip set performance by deploying Windows 7."

So what you mean is... if/when I feel the need for a new PC I should buy one with Windows 7 on it.

But "it takes up about the same amount of RAM" means that in the meantime there's nothing to be gained from changing the OS on my (single core) XP desktop or (single core) Vista laptop?

Good, now I'll go back to doing something interesting with my PC and stop worrying about which OS I should be running.