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I was reminded today via a friend asking whether to order or not, that the new Microsoft Operating system, Windows 7 is due for official launch on the 22^nd of October and for once, that is excellent news. In the normal run of things the advice would be, “Don’t buy a copy until the first Service Pack is released !” As service packs are basically “bug fixes”, the logic being to let every other mug find out the problems, only buy once they are fixed.

However, during the various incarnations of the Windows O/S, there have been some that worked well pretty much out of the box, Windows 95, Windows 2000 and now, Windows 7. I can speak well of it because between the Beta and the Release Candidate, I have been running it on various computers for almost a year.

Is Windows 7 Good ?

I am convinced that it is an excellent product and the very least that you can say about it is that it is what Vista should have been but never was and ends what has been a very difficult period in Microsoft Operating Systems that stretches back to the launch of Windows XP. For all the fact that people have clung on to this 8 year old O/S and refused to take up Vista, especially in the corporate market, that should not disguise that XP wasn’t that great an O/S either in many respects, the last “pure O/S” was windows 2000, everything else has been patches upon patches since.

To put that into a proper perspective, I was tearing my hair out over installing Vista on one of my workstations, “Vista Blisters ?” It was a total dog of an O/S but as I have several workstations in play and always a virtual duplicate of my main general purpose PC, I was able to leave Vista installed and over time and very many service patches later, it became first equal to its XP twin and after a time, better. The only difference which may well have helped was that I was running the 64 Bit version of both systems.

Running Betas

In the normal run of things, I would generally avoid running beta versions of any software, its messy and always needs to be un-installed at some stage however, when the public beta came up on Windows 7, the best “Techie” I had ever had working with me, gave it a thumbs up so, I downloaded and installed it. From the “off” it became clear that this was a very polished and workmanlike product and I threw all the software at it it that I might use to see how it worked, it passed every test.

When the RC version – Release Candidate arrived, you had to do a clean install rather than an upgrade, I did all 3 machines I had on this test then and sure, the RC will run into early Summer next year before you had to buy a copy but, I had already decided to switch my 4 main PCs to Win 7 and therefore wanted the full licences as early as possible. Although unusual for one idiot to have 4 PCs being used on a regular basis, although I only use one at a time, they are pretty integrated and each dedicated to specific tasks but sharing common data sources so, any upgrades I want to do at the same time.

Buying Product

I have little to no time for the EU however, because of their battles with Microsoft over bundled features such as Internet Explorer, enough confusion reigned for Microsoft to offer their EU customers who pre-ordered a stunning deal so I took advantage and will get at likely one third of the full retail price, my copies of Windows 7 as “bare metal” full installs.

What does that mean ? You may ask but it is significant and a brief background might help you to see why. Back in the days of 16 bit O/S like Windows x3, 95 and 98, the Windows System sat on top of DOS and therefore was an “optional enhancement” so consumers would go out and buy copies of Windows. However, with the introduction of NT4 and Windows 2000, this became less the case and today, very few people buy operating systems retail, they are supplied and included with the Laptops and desktops at the time of purchase of the whole machine.

When you buy a PC from Dell, Lenovo, HP and so on, you will get a “Recovery Disk” that includes the Windows O/S but it is tightly tied to the Manufacturers hardware so you cannot install it on another PC. So a copy of Win 7 that can be installed on any ‘bare metal’ PC and moved from one PC to another, is a very big bonus. Fair enough, one registered copy only on one PC at any time, is right but at least you get rid of the idiocy of “authorization” being refused because you have upgraded your motherboard.

Roll On October 22^nd

The bottom line is that I will have my Win 7 copies arrive by the end of the month, will spend probably a couple of days upgrading and reinstating data and be back in business again with a decent and reliable operating system that I was able to fully test before I had to buy it. However much I may have cursed Microsoft in the past over various matters, total respect over this one, they fully deserve the success that surely must follow, well done them.

If you have not “pre-ordered” and have several home PCs because of children etc, don’t rush because one of the best deals in town will be the Windows 7 “Family Pack” or whatever they call it whereby you can upgrade several PCs from one purchase, check it out because Windows 7 is a really friendly system that will even run on older kit quite happily.