Windows 7

I was not one of those people who complained about Vista.  I actually really liked it.  My laptop is about 2 years old and came with Vista Business.  I never had any major problems with it.  It's for that reason that I was not super excited about Windows 7.  The last thing I wanted to do was start testing it and break everything else on my machine.  Unfortunately, I do that sometimes.  I think I drive our techs crazy but I have fun learning about new stuff.  I heard the techs saying how much they loved it and how smooth the upgrade went.  Thats what finally convinced me to give it a try.

I have to be honest here.  My tech skills are lacking since I've been doing business development over the past 3 years.  I'm just as scared as anyone else when I do an upgrade on my own.  I downloaded and ran the tool that tells you if your machine is ready for Windows 7 called Windows 7 upgrade advisor http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx.   The tool revealed that I needed to uninstall my graphics controller and Itunes and then reinstall them after the upgrade.  That made me nervous.  I hate dealing with graphics controller software.  I'm always worried I'll break something and the computer will work but I wont be able to see anything.  Luckily, the removal of the applications went smoothly, as well as their re-installation.  After that I ran the upgrade on my Vista machine and it went extremely smooth.  For me, it only took a few hours.  I've talked to others that said it took up to 4 hours.  When I logged back into my computer after the upgrade everything worked as before.  The changes they made to the OS are significant improvements to Vista.  I'm really impressed!

I know many of the Mac users are out there turning their noses up.  You cant blame them. Mac has made quite a reputation for themselves.  I love Macs.  I actually started my computer career working in the Mac lab at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire.  Ok, so what is so great about Windows 7?  Nothing and everything.  It is finally good enough to keep people from switching to Mac.  Its stable.  It's smooth.  It's fun to work with.  IT has cool gagets and graphics.  For me, it just makes it easier to get more work done faster.  Especially the way that it works with windows when you are running multiple applications.  Things just seem to make more sense.  They've made little tweaks all over the place. My opinion is that Vista was pretty cool to begin with.  So it is like Vista was the Toyota and Windows 7 is the Lexus.  (Sorry about the car analogy)  I think that for the first time this OS feels polished and ready right out of the gate.  I guess the key is that it feels that way.  Even if their will be patches and releases down the road, as a user,  I'm not concerned with that now.  and thats how it should be.  I guess thats what people love about Macs....they just make sense.  I'm glad they got a hit here.  Now we can all get excited for Office 2010.  Check out the beta......if you dare http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx.

Does this mean I'm only in favor of Microsoft Product?  Absolutely not.  I'm excited to try out the new Google Chrome operating system.  I'm sure there will be a whirlwind of change in 2010.  What I love about the Tech industry is that the competition makes things better for all of us.  When Microsoft did not have as much competition their products suffered.  Now they are lighting things up.  Way to go!

Thanks for reading.