Windows 7 Desktop

Besides the appealing animated icons and transparent windows, there are new exciting features.  Out of fifty-two new published features, there were four that stood out as important: 

• Backup and Restore: A new feature which makes backups very simple and intuitive.
• BitLocker: A tool to encrypt your data, so that in case of a loss, your data cannot be accessed
• Improved Memory Use: Windows 7 uses memory more efficiently than its Vista predecessor
• Performance Improvements: Windows 7 responds much quicker than Vista

If you have purchased a PC running Vista, I highly recommend the upgrade to Windows 7, as long as your hardware in compatible.  Windows 7 is a vast improvement over the Vista litter. 

Windows 7 is no exception the rule of drawbacks of ’new’. 

• Potential problems with hardware compatibility
• Increased service costs for setup, deployment and fixes
• Software compatibility issues, particularly specialized business software
• Risk of downtime
• Costs of rollback if serious issues occur

Windows XP was released in 2001.  It only became a very serious and stable operating system after service pack 2 and the October 2006 update set.  It has since become a very serious system for business productivity and counted on my hundreds of millions of users worldwide. 

For years I have recommended that businesses stick it out with Windows XP because of the low maintenance costs and reliability for the production environment.  In this case I must stick with it.  Unlike Vista, Windows 7 has great potential.  In about a year and a service pack, I may start recommending it to clients.  Until then, XP is king for business.