Should I upgrade to Windows 7 from XP?

The talk around the blogosphere until the past month or so has been about how excellent Windows 7 is going to be.  The beta was released, and testers were happy.  RC1 was released, and testers will still happy.  Many people just used it as their main OS because it was so stable.  It just worked…finally.

But what if you never moved to Vista and are still running XP?  What if you’ve never had to deal with the headaches of Vista’s launch and all the bugs that come with a Microsoft OS before the first Service Pack?  You don’t really have that bad taste in your mouth.  Is it worth the $50 or $100 to upgrade to Home Premium or Professional?  I guess that all depends on what type of user you are.

PC users today, of the non-geek variety, just want their computer to work.  They want it to not crash all the time.  They want enough power so that they can run an IM client, surf the internet, check email, play some music, have antivirus running, and leave a little room for the Malware that has infected their Windows PC.  Do they want to encrypt their entire desktop hard drive?  No.  Do they want remote access to their machine for when they’re away from home?  No.  Do they want multi touch capabilities?  No(t yet).  Do they care if their Windows are see through?  No.

So, what DO users want from Windows 7 that XP doesn’t offer (easily)?   They want to be able to store their files easily and to be indexed so search doesn’t take as long.  They want it to boot up and shut down faster.  They want better device management for their digital cameras and mobile phones.

What about the geek community?  What do they want?  Well, they/we want it to do everything it advertises and about 200 things it doesn’t.  That’s just how it goes.  But on a day to day basis, what are some of the newer features we want to get our teeth into that we can’t do in XP?  64 bit support (this doesn’t count).  Virtual Disk support.  Remote Access.  Stability.  Network backups.

Now, what do the geeks actually need?  Depends on what flavor of geek you are, but for me personally, there isn’t one thing that Windows XP and a couple of third party applications can’t do for me.  Indexing of the hard drive?  Google has something for you.  Virtual Machines?  Microsoft Virtual PC has the hookup.  Stability?  We’re on SP3, it’s pretty solid.  More RAM?  I get by fine with 3 (even though I have 4 installed…).  Remote Access?  Logmein.  Stability?  Hasn’t crashed outside of a browser in a few months.  64 bit support?  How many applications are ready for that?  Very few, though I would like to see all my RAM.  Network backups?  Yea, we’re still getting there…

So, in short, the answer is – it depends.  If we’re talking about the majority of users, Windows 7 is by no means a required upgrade, even if you’re still running XP.  For those buying a brand new machine, it’s probably best to have it for future-proofing.  If you’re running XP now and it’s running like crap, trust me, it’s not the OS – it’s you, and installing Windows 7 isn’t going to prevent you from inadvertently installing a lot of junk.

Will I buy the upgrade?  Eventually, sure.  Will I buy it during the presale?  Maybe.  Depends on whether or not I have some extra cash and enough free time to reformat my machine because you can’t directly upgrade from XP to 7.

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Tags: windows 7, windows vista, windows xp

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under PC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.