Moving To Windows 7

I've been using Windows XP since 2004, and this year would have been the tenth year of it being my Operating System of choice. And even though it has its issues, I have nothing but praises for XP. Especially after trying Vista out for a week when it came out back in 2007. I read a lot of reviews on Vista, most were less than inspiring with people crying foul over Microsoft's release of a "rip off". Still, I went ahead and tried it to see for myself if the reviews were true... and they were.

Vista was just flashy in my opinion. It presented nothing significantly new, just a lot of eye candy. Moreover, some of the essential software I use for work, which ran without a hitch in XP, would not even install on a Vista machine. I thought to myself. "Did Microsoft redesign Windows and in doing so, threw away backward compatibility?" Vista stayed installed on my computer for just a week. It just felt heavy even when the machine I was using at the time had a 3 gigahertz processor and 1 gig of RAM. It was slower than XP and quite annoying with all the pop-ups too. Vista even made me feel that all my equipment are dated and I need to go out and buy new printers and stuff. I formatted the drive (to get all traces of Vista out) and re-installed my trusty XP, which remained my operating system for several more years until now.

A few months earlier I tried both Windows 7 and Windows 8 on the other of the 2 computers we have, while XP remained on my main computer, I was able to get a feel for both newer operating systems without sacrificing up time on my work PC. Both Windows 7 and 8 feel fast, and can accept many to most of the software I use. But Windows 7 seems to be the better choice for me. I see Windows 8 has a lot of touch based features that, although it works with a mouse, has some unnecessary screens or steps that I can do without. It's like Windows 7 without the start button. They replaced it with a full screen interface that resembles an interactive kiosk for the less tech savvy.

With 7, it was the Aero functions that got me sold. Snapping to the sides lets an open window resize to take up half the screen. Making my review jobs easier to setup. dragging a window to the top edge of the screen maximizes the window, dragging it down restores it, and the best part is when you shake it it minimizes all other windows. I'm quite sure there will be even more intuitive things to discover and to come. I'm just happy that a newer and worthwhile replacement has come for Windows XP that installs all my software. Which is what an OS is supposed to do.