Graham's Blog

Microsoft has released an upgrade chart to display the options you have for installation when upgrading to Windows 7

Care of Windows7centre.com

Just a bit more of a follow up and things I forgot to mention about my take on Windows 7.
One has to bear in mind that Windows Vista was out almost 3 years ago now and hardware these days is multi core cpu’s and better graphics cards , motherboards and more memory. Even installing Vista SP2 on todays hardware, it will run pretty well as does Windows 7.
Installing either Vista or Windows 7 on hardware 3 years back, from my own tests they both perform about the same, Windows 7 has the advantage that when its a fresh install a lot of the services are not started automatically and also no where near as much is installed as the start, as can be seen by a Windows 7 install is smaller than a Vista one. As I mentioned before, on old hardware I would not be suprised to still see people moaning XP is faster, and for sure it still is.
But with much faster pc’s around now along with the fast hard disks etc and more people using quad core cpu’s, both Vista and Windows 7 make better use of those features. Windows 7 has some great features for todays hardware and thats things like XP mode and native VHD boot and looks much cleaner and less cluttered than Vista ever was. I still look at Windows 7 as a minor upgrade, and for that reason I still think its over priced.
If buying a new pc and its not the cheap botttom end models, Windows 7 is good system, as others have said, its Vista done right, but also it has a great advantage on launch day, that the hardware around for its launch is so much better than when Vista came out, and hence I dont expect to see the same massive negative reviews on Windows 7 as there was when Vista hit the shelves. For a lot of old pc’s and most netbooks, my guess is XP still takes some beating…

Well after using the Windows 7 beta and RC versions for some time now, was a bit disapointed at the pricing.
Especially for those who bought Vista ulitimate when it first came out, for those users Windows 7 really ought to have been a free upgrade, seeing as they got hardly anything in the way of ultimate extras for the big premuim they paid at the time.
Windows 7 is very fast after a clean install, how ever in my use of it on many different setups, it def slows down a lot once you install software and in the end seems no faster than Vista was.
The new task bar is a improvement for sure, and on a new install its very light and fast. Sadly as you install software and services get trigged on it, it does not stay that way. Yes you can install it on a lower powered machine than you could with Vista, but once you have a drive full of installed programs, it will slow down quite a bit and will be intresting to see reviews of systems once they come out in Oct 22nd and see what people think a few months down the road.
I would say that at least by Oct a lot of new pc’s and laptops that will be around then will be so much more powerful than what was around when Vista came out, that I would assume not so many will see the slow down that Vista machines suffered out of the box, and that will prob make Windows 7 seem far better than Vista, although I think a lot will be to do with machines better spec these days.
To use the Windows XP mode in Windows 7 you also need a very powerful pc with lots of ram, or using that XP mode is a dog.
I would def recommend Windows 7, but its not great jump in OS speed, if you want that and know how to securely setup Windows Xp and you can get xp drivers okay, Windows XP is still the faster OS. If you already have a nice powerful PC and running Vista, is this a must have upgrade? I am not so sure….
p.s Dont do a upgrade install, always do a fresh one. I tried upgrading Vista and all you end up is the same slow system, with just the Windows 7 look…