Well, it sounds like a life time ago that I first started investigating the next and greatest thing since sliced bread, yes Windows Vista. After a 5 year gap between operating system versions, there was a lot of hype around Windows Vista and how much better it is than Windows XP. Many argue against that and have not yet gone down the route of implementing Windows Vista into their networks or on their home PC’s. XP has better start up times, ummm, yes if you are running XP on today’s hardware, but how about we run XP on a Pentium 4 with 256 RAM and compare that against Windows Vista on current hardware…… you get my drift.
It will be 2 years next month that I went live with Windows Vista and deployed it on my network of over 100 machines. Was it smooth sailing? Did we have any application compatability issues? Did my printers stop working? Did everyone think I was crazy? Well, nobody goes in with a blind eye and there were many months of testing and re-testing and piloting before I took the plunge. However, after the long nights and some hair pulling moments I am happy to say that I have not looked back and even with the slight hiccup here and there I would be more than happy to manage a Windows Vista network over a Windows XP network any day. Are you sold yet? Okay enough with the ramblings, the reason for this post isn’t about Windows Vista, but about Windows 7 and how much better it is than Windows Vista.. even in it’s beta stages!
Well, you have probably guessed it, I am already running Windows 7 as my primary work machine and I can’t rave more about it! I am sure you have read the publicity around Windows 7 being the saviour for Microsoft and I am not disagreeing. I am sure Windows 7 will bring a lot more faith to end users who have been scarred by Windows Vista bad publicity. It’s been over a month and I am more than happy with the way Windows 7 is progressing. It’s snappier, more responsive with a few nice touches. I won’t go into them in too much detail but have provided you with a link to the Microsoft Windows 7 Engineering Blog who have listed some changes to expect in RC.