The Pros and Cons of Windows 7
What is the biggest advantage and disadvantage of the recently released Windows 7?
The biggest advantage you may find is that the new operating system is not Vista. Although Vista had some early positive reviews it never gained the acceptance that Microsoft desired. Today both business and home users still rely on Windows XP.
The Vista operating system failed to provide any notable performance improvement over the accepted and stable Windows XP and the User Access Control (UAC) drove most users crazy.
Since the release of Vista, all too often users were demanding their PC be downgraded to the familiar and comfortable XP. In fact, Dell offered the option of shipping your system with XP with the option to upgrade to Vista later.
I have been running the Beta and Release Candidate of Windows 7 for several months now and overall I give the OS a big thumbs up. But, a few of the problems that plagued Vista early on are still present with the new Windows 7.
Chief among those problems is the UAC which is still turned on by default as it was with Vista. If you are a typical computer user the UAC will continue to annoy you with pop up warnings every time you install software, make a change to the OS or download a file.
I think the UAC is a good idea to maintain a secure and healthy OS. However, if you are annoyed by it and are willing to accept the risk, it is simple to turn off.
The next biggest disadvantage of Windows 7 is that you may not have compatible hardware drivers. So, there is a chance that printers, wireless routers, web cams and peripheral devices may not work. It is a good idea to check out whether the manufacture of your devices such as printers have updated drivers for you to download and install for Windows 7 as some drivers will not come with new OS.
The biggest problem for most home users that are not very tech savvy is there is no direct upgrade from Vista or XP to Windows 7. You will have to uninstall your operating system and perform a fresh install of Windows 7.
However, Microsoft created the Window Easy Transfer tool to help ease the pain when making the upgrade from XP or Vista to Windows 7.
Now some will say that doing a fresh install is not an advantage, but I will argue the opposite. A fresh install gives you an opportunity to do some clean up. Overtime, uninstalling and re-installing software and hardware creates problems with the registry causing declining performance. So a fresh install, just like moving to a new house, gives you a chance to clear out all of your junk.
The huge advantage I found with Window 7 is with performance. My windows browser and other programs open faster. Now, this is subjective and I did no benchmark testing. If you have better than the minimum requirements of a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of hard drive space I am confident you will notice improved performance with Windows 7.
And there is a definite increase in the cool factor for Windows 7. From the layout of the start button and applications to the flashy new desktop backgrounds and themes, Microsoft finally increases its cool appeal.