The Computer Buzz

April 30th, 2009

Nome and Paul Van Middlesworth - owners - The Computer Factory
 

Did Microsoft Get it Right?

Windows 7 will replace Vista, Microsoft's "Edsel," sometime this fall. This is good news for those unfortunates who purchased PCs with Vista. Win 7 corrects the problems that made Vista such a stinker. Microsoft is guaranteed a sure winner with Win 7 because Vista users will stampede to upgrade their problem plagued slow poke PCs to the new Win 7 OS.

In a competitive environment Microsoft would probably have been forced to offer Win 7 as a free "service pack" to correct the deficiencies of Vista, but since Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on PC operating systems and a stable of talented lawyers, Vista users will pay through the nose for the opportunity to "fix" their Vista PCs with a Win 7 upgrade.

Fortunately 90% of businesses users, 70% of non-business users and (hopefully) 100% of our readers were smart enough to avoid these problems completely by sticking with Windows XP throughout the dark ages of Vista.

The biggest problems with Vista were that it was slower than XP and not compatible with a lot of the hardware and applications in common use. Savvy users eschewed Vista because of speed and compatibility issues.

In order to make Win 7 attractive to the 75% of PC users who still use XP, Microsoft last week came up with a stunningly intelligent announcement. Windows 7 (unlike Vista) will be able to run in XP mode. This means that the XP hardware and software applications that were not compatible with Vista will be compatible within Windows 7. Amazing.

From Beta test trials we already know that windows 7 is even faster than XP. Win 7's XP emulation resolves the lingering issues of hardware and software compatibility that plagued Vista. Dare we hope that Microsoft has it right this time? It looks very promising.

The 32-bit vs. 64-bit issues still cloud the horizon. The PC industry has been primed to migrate to 64 bit operating systems for some time. Even today both XP and Vista are available in limited 64-bit versions. A 64 bit OS is more stable, faster and can address an unlimited amount of memory (RAM). A 32 bit OS can address only 3.5Gb of RAM. Migration to 64-bit has been slowed by the reluctance of software and hardware makers to commit resources to the development of 64 bit compatibility. All that is rapidly changing. Taking full advantage of Windows 7 will require an upgrade to the 64-bit version. This will be "from scratch" and require the re-installation of all programs, drivers, devices, WWW connections and the reloading or reacquisition of data files, a task beyond the comfort level of most users.

We estimate the "elapsed time" for a Win 7 upgrade to be about 4 hours including 1-½ hours of "tech time." In-shop labor charges are "tech time" only, on-site labor is charged by "elapsed time." The labor cost of a Win 7 upgrade will be about $100 in-shop and about $300 on-site.