Windows 7.. What's In store for the Family that Upgrades
After running the Release Candidate of Windows 7 for over a month now, I've learned some special items that need to be addressed for the family that's still using Windows XP and wants to upgrade. First of all, it's not an upgrade. Let me repeat that it's Not an Upgrade! The only way to really upgrade to Windows 7 is if you have Windows Vista. With this said and now out of the way, lets see why it's better not to upgrade, but to go for the clean install.
As a tech, I have always hated “upgrading” to the latest version of Windows OS for it always leaves a lot of junk on your system. Clean installs are the best way to go, however painful it may seem to have to reinstall your applications all over again. Now Windows 7 does do a sweet trick when it comes to it's install. It does backup your previous “profile” (My documents, my pictures, favorites, settings, etc..) and the previous Windows folder, all under a folder called Windows.old I know this is not the “easy upgrade” we had in the past, but think of it as an opportunity to finally get those backups you've been meaning to do for months (In some cases years).
Once installed Windows 7 found all but one driver for my system. Now understand that all my computers I have are my own builds, so no HP,IBM,Dell standard driver format here. That's not bad for a release candidate!!! I found that Windows 7 started faster, shutdown faster and ran many apps quicker than my XP did. Draw backs: Some of my games didn't work, but found work arounds on most via Google search. What was a real delight was that when a program “stopped responding”, and nice message pops up and properly informs you of this. When you select “stop program” it “stops” the program. No more waiting forever for it to kill it and in the process hanging up the entire PC!!! It's the same when shutting down the system. It shuts down like it should, not taking forever and a day.
All said, I believe this is the upgrade that's worth getting this time................
As a tech, I have always hated “upgrading” to the latest version of Windows OS for it always leaves a lot of junk on your system. Clean installs are the best way to go, however painful it may seem to have to reinstall your applications all over again. Now Windows 7 does do a sweet trick when it comes to it's install. It does backup your previous “profile” (My documents, my pictures, favorites, settings, etc..) and the previous Windows folder, all under a folder called Windows.old I know this is not the “easy upgrade” we had in the past, but think of it as an opportunity to finally get those backups you've been meaning to do for months (In some cases years).
Once installed Windows 7 found all but one driver for my system. Now understand that all my computers I have are my own builds, so no HP,IBM,Dell standard driver format here. That's not bad for a release candidate!!! I found that Windows 7 started faster, shutdown faster and ran many apps quicker than my XP did. Draw backs: Some of my games didn't work, but found work arounds on most via Google search. What was a real delight was that when a program “stopped responding”, and nice message pops up and properly informs you of this. When you select “stop program” it “stops” the program. No more waiting forever for it to kill it and in the process hanging up the entire PC!!! It's the same when shutting down the system. It shuts down like it should, not taking forever and a day.
All said, I believe this is the upgrade that's worth getting this time................
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