Windows 7 - To Upgrade or Not?

With the impending release of Windows 7, many of you may be asking whether you should upgrade or not.

The short answer - It depends.

In almost all cases, we do not recommend upgrading an operating system on an existing system. We’ve followed this philosophy dating all the way back to Windows 3.1. Upgrading an operating system almost always causes things, to put it simply, to just not feel right. Microsoft even recommends a wipe and reload as opposed to an upgrade.

If your system is running Windows XP (or worse yet, Windows 2000), then it is time to upgrade your system. We recommend the purchase of new hardware every three years for businesses. Anything older than three years, usually does not have the CPU speed or memory to run today’s applications. We’re seeing anti-virus programs slow systems that may have been speed demons before, down to a crawl.

We can help in the purchase of new systems along with the transfer of your data from your old system to your new system. If you need help, contact us.

So, if you are running a system older than three years old, you need a new system preloaded with Windows 7 with at least 4Gb of RAM.

Now, for those systems recently purchased running XP. You have no choice but to do a wipe and reload if you want Windows 7. There is no upgrade path to Windows 7. If you need help transferring your files over, we can help. In most cases, those systems can run Windows 7 and there is no need to purchase a new system. However, unless there are features in Windows 7 that you are just dying to get your hands on, I might recommend sticking with XP.

For those systems running Windows Vista? I would defnitely recommend moving to Windows 7. How to get there is a different matter. I tried an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 on my laptop and was not impressed. The performance and stability were worse than on Vista. For the most part, as IT professionals, most of us see Windows 7 as a service pack for Vista. It’s kind of like Vista Service Pack 3. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the results I had expected. I wiped and loaded Windows 7 as a clean install on the same laptop and noticed a tremendous performance increase from Vista. Note that on the upgrade, I noticed a decrease in performance. The bottom line is that, while from a technical standpoint, we can treat this as a service pack, from a standpoint of getting the operating system installed, we need to treat this as a new operating system.

For those trying to decide between XP, Vista, or Windows 7 on a new PC? Definitely Windows 7. XP is an operating system that is 7 years old. A lot has changed since then. Vista is an operating system that, well, is best left alongside Windows ME and Microsoft BOB.

We can help with any of your computer needs. Visit our website at http://www.aspendora.com/.