Vista Users: Switch to Windows 7. XP Users: Stay With XP…But Can You?
This week, Microsoft will release Windows 7. Of course, for those who use Windows Vista, it is not hard to push for an upgrade: things will run faster and be more stable. But what about those who use Windows XP? Is there real gain? My answer is a big NO! Still, I’m amazed to see how we got to this point where upgrading from the current version of a software (Vista) is worth it, but that upgrading from an older version (XP) isn’t worth it!! I wonder why we upgraded to Vista from XP in the first place. Well, there is an explanation.
It is widely recognized by IT strategy gurus that Windows is Windows’ biggest competitor. Once this non-secure piece of software is sold, its developer has to go for never-ending patches. If no new version of that software is sold before its patching costs catches up with its sales income, it will only be a question of time for things to go real ugly for the software developer. This is precisely where Windows’ competition with itself is such a pain: customers don’t find any reason to change one non-secure version of an OS with another non-secure version of that same OS. After all, patching will go on for ever isn’t it? Why should customers pay for new cycles?
Well, Microsoft found a solutions to this problem: force users to pay for that new version by closing deals with PC manufacturers. This game went successfully on until the release of Windows Vista where people didn’t want to go for the upgrade. Vista was a disaster in many ways, especially in terms of compatibility with existing software applications.
This time, striking a deal with PC manufacturer wasn’t going to be enough. This time, Microsoft would have basically had to strike a deal with every software developer to ship free Vista-compatible upgrades of their products. The costs of such operations was just prohibitive for it to happen. So what happened instead was that PC manufacturers gave the option of having PCs delivered with Windows XP. Microsoft was even forced to extend its support deadline for XP.
Once again, Microsoft will tax users that don’t need to upgrade. This time, it will be called Windows 7 Professional Edition. What has Professional Edition in special? Well it is the cheaper version of Windows 7 that included Windows XP Mode. Yes, you got it right. Compatibility will still be an issue with Windows 7.
I am running XP on my laptop and as soon as I get my MFG’s disc I’m going to do a full restore with Windows 7. I am confident it’s 100% better than Vista ever was meant to be, and I can’t wait to use it as a stable OS.
7 is better than Vista, but it isn’t better than XP.
While game developers keep outputing software compatible with XP I won’t change.
You have to be kidding, right? I am guessing you are a Linux or Apple fan.
Vista compatibility with applications? Not really. XP better than Windows 7 – you have to be joking. Windows 7 is far better in so many ways I can’t list them. I’ve been using Windows 7 since RTM appeared on MSDN. The only problem so far has been driver support for one of my devices, but it was one that was also not supported under Vista and flaky at best in XP. That’s not the O/S at fault, it’s crappy drivers.
Thank you Mustang for your valuable comment about gamers.
Concerning XP compatibility mode or virtual machines, they are all an extra software layer. As a result, there will always be performance issues when a resource consuming processes such as games need to run.
Even the games comment is irrelevant. Just use XP compatibility mode or boot XP from Windows 7 using the VPC features. It’s allowed!
Not true – you clearly don’t fully understand how Windows 7 works. You can boot from a VPC using full hardware. It’s essentially like dual-booting.
Sorry to disappoint you Jim, but VPC is just a hardware-assisted virtualization platform like others (VMWare, VirtualBox) and YES, it is an extra software layer and NO, it is not quite direct access to hardware like you believe. Here a few reviews for the non-technical reader about XP Mode in Windows 7:
XP Mode and gaming: Not so much
XP Mode in Windows 7 is a scam