Windows 7 Upgrade?

You're not alone if you're a PC user mulling whether or not you should upgrade to Microsoft's latest Windows release. Windows 7, new this week, is garnering favorable reviews from tech practitioners and enthusiasts, but is it truly worth taking the plunge?

The answer depends largely on whether you're a home or business user, and which older version of Windows you'll be leaving behind. If you're a business user, chances are your company will decide whether or not to pony up for the latest and greatest. Home users have more flexibility, but also need to think more carefully about what exactly they require of their home computers. Those running Windows Vista will find that upgrading to 7 provides a slight savings in disk space as well as marginal improvements in both OS and application performance and system memory usage. Windows 7 also benefits from driver support that is much improved over the early disaster that was Vista; generally the programs working for you now in Vista will also work for you in 7 should you decide to upgrade.

Windows XP users face a rockier road to upgrade bliss, primarily due to the huge under-the-hood differences between XP and Vista/7. The underlying graphics and audio stacks are radically different, and as such you may find that some of your applications that work swimmingly in XP require driver upgrades and tweaking in order to run under 7. Upgrading an operating system is rarely a pain-free process, but given that XP is nearly a decade old and rapidly becoming obsolete, you will eventually be forced to upgrade to a newer version as support for XP will be phased out of newly releasing software products.

If you're a home user with questions about compatibility, or a business user looking to get some assistance upgrading your office machines, give us a call at AIS Solutions Group. Our fast, friendly professionals will fill you in on all the finer points of Windows 7 and help you determine whether or not the new system is right for you.