Windows 7: Should I switch?

In 2001 we were blessed with the release of Microsoft Windows XP. Most of us thought this was a Godsend. I have to say that with XP, great improvement was registered when compared to the operating systems (OS) we used before. However, it quickly earned itself the term of the Swiss cheese OS! That's until service pack 2 came out. This fixed a lot of security holes that it suffered from. Numerous security updates etc later we somehow got used to XP.

Then Vista came along. This turned out to be known as Microsoft's biggest failure. It turned brand new spanking machines into slow computers. Poor performance in networking, games and accessing of data on hard disks were Vista's main flaws.

Having said that, Vista laid down some groundwork in new technologies. This pushed Windows into the 21st century. One of these great leaps was the decision to move drivers' functionality to user space instead of the kernel space, i.e. the bridge between applications and the actual data processing. Leaving the kernel alone helps make the OS more stable overall.

People are starting to ask if they should take the plunge with Windows 7. Let's start with what hardware you will need, or at least, what Microsoft recommends for their final release version:

• 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.
• 1 GB of RAM (32-bit)/2 GB of RAM (64-bit).
• 16 GB of available disk space (32-bit)/20 GB (64-bit).
• DirectX 9 graphics device with Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 or higher.

As you can see, these specs are quite normal for today's standards, although they are a bit higher than what we told Vista needed, but then again that was some time ago.

All the major hardware manufacturers are starting to release Windows 7 drivers for their hardware.

Personally I have been using Windows 7 for some months now and have to say that my PC has never experienced a blue-screen crash, yet.

I still experience random crashes of software but that's to be expected when running multiple versions of resource hungry applications that is not quite normal for a PC.

Another thing that users ask is that if they should choose the 32-bit or the 64-bit versions of Windows. Apart from some security advantages with the 64-bit version, the main reason that most users are interested in is the fact the amount of ram that the 32-bit (2 to the power of 32) version can access around the 4 GB of RAM whereas the 64-bit version can access much more.

Windows 7 64-bit has a 192 GB limit of RAM, while the 32-bit version has just 4. The 32-bit Starter edition is even less capable, with just 2 GB or RAM.

Sure, the 64-bit version is capable of accessing much more RAM but it comes at a price. There is a lot of 16-bit software still being used and a lot of these will simply not run on a 64-bit OS. So it's a gamble you will have to take if you choose to go down the 64-bit lane! Next time we meet, we shall look at some of the new features of Windows 7 and how some things have been changed around.

Mr Marshall, a certified computer programmer and technician, is giving regular tips in i-Tech on how to make the best and safest use of computers. He can be contacted at noelmarshall.itech@gmail.com.