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Windows 7 Arrives This Week: What You Need To Know
in-house feature
The much anticipated release of Windows 7 is finally upon us. This Thursday, October 22, Microsoft's latest operating system arrives on the scene looking to win over skeptics disappointed with the much-hyped but often criticized Windows Vista. Whereas its predecessor got off to a rough start with plentiful compatibility issues and incessant "allow or deny" prompts annoying users, Windows 7 represents a major leap forward and has generally been regarded as a snappier and more polished operating system.
We've been playing with it ever since the beta became available, and can honestly say that much of the hype is justified. Although Windows 7 is still very much the same as Vista at its core, hundreds of small improvements make it work more smoothly, easier to navigate and overall better looking than before. With few exceptions, compatibility isn't expected to be a major issue either.
In preparation for the launch this week, we thought it would be a good idea to run through a few things worth keeping in mind before taking the plunge. If you are thinking about going Windows 7, read on.
Read the complete guide.
We've been playing with it ever since the beta became available, and can honestly say that much of the hype is justified. Although Windows 7 is still very much the same as Vista at its core, hundreds of small improvements make it work more smoothly, easier to navigate and overall better looking than before. With few exceptions, compatibility isn't expected to be a major issue either.
In preparation for the launch this week, we thought it would be a good idea to run through a few things worth keeping in mind before taking the plunge. If you are thinking about going Windows 7, read on.
Read the complete guide.
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User Comments (23)
Post a comment| LightHeart on October 20, 2009 7:10 AM | Nice Guide. I have been running Win 7 x64 RTM for awhile now and I really like it. I have not had any problems with drivers or applications (using it for business). When I’m working on any older OS I miss the features of Windows 7. |
| TomSEA on October 20, 2009 12:50 PM | Very nice synopsis of pertinent articles. Thanks! Any idea when you will have a suggested tweaking guide out for it? |
| mattfrompa on October 20, 2009 12:54 PM | Just wanted to say this is a very thorough guide, that calls upon many useful articles. I'll be linking many of my friends back to this page! |
| Guest on October 20, 2009 6:46 PM | Yes thanks for this guide, it definitely cleared up a few worries I had about upgrading to windows 7. I won't be upgrading until I have to though. Plus I didn't know the OEM would be so cheap... I will probably go with that option when the time comes. |
| siiix on October 20, 2009 8:08 PM | well thats the problem it still reminds me a lot of vista,
for me its better then vista but still not as good as XP...
but i guess i cant stay forever with XP, i will have to
install this junk after a while for me its not a question of cost, its simply preference, vista and even 7 are really stupid in the way to you do anything ... i read is before and i have to agree "vista was designed with the idiots in mind", for the advanced , knowledgeable used it a horror having to use such OS |
| red1776 on October 21, 2009 2:17 AM | siiix said: I am intrigued by your comment siiix, would you
list some of the ways that XP is superior to 7?well thats the problem it still reminds me a lot of vista, for me its better then vista but still not as good as XP... but i guess i cant stay forever with XP, i will have to install this junk after a while for me its not a question of cost, its simply preference, vista and even 7 are really stupid in the way to you do anything ... i read is before and i have to agree "vista was designed with the idiots in mind", for the advanced , knowledgeable used it a horror having to use such OS |
| LNCPapa on October 21, 2009 3:41 PM | You could always stick with XP. No one is forcing you to move to 7. If you love it so much and if it's not broken... don't try to fix it - especially if you're just going to think of it as junk anyway. |
| tengeta on October 21, 2009 4:33 PM | Except for the part where if you are an "advanced and knowledgeable user" you could have fixed all of Vista's problems in no time. You just garbled BS down and believed it, and only thought about that while using the OS so you refused to look for anything good. |
| Guest on October 24, 2009 11:22 AM | This down load has spyware in it, check the first two highlighted and you get an advertisement not for Windows 7 and it also causes my malware checker to send out an alarm. |
| Souljacker on October 28, 2009 7:58 AM | My processor score jumped from 5.6 in Vista to 5.9,
interesting? Love 7 so far, it's so much less "clunky" than Vista and it has a lot of handy features to boot. |
| giorgiodechir on October 28, 2009 2:44 PM | thank you for this. helped me alot in comparing windows 7 to vista, and allowed me to go ahead and make my purchase with confidence! thanks again |
| mv670 on October 28, 2009 3:13 PM | seems like its the perfect time to replace my mobo and
processor for something more up to date. Just in time for Windows 7 
|
| bigd353 on October 29, 2009 2:47 AM | Put a new hard drive in my Lenovo T61 and installed 64-bit.
RC-1 ran on this PC without any issues - but not W7-HP.
Would not recognize my Nvidia video card, no matter what,
and I had three base devices that could not be recognized.
Then, just like MS was watching me struggle, the most
serious issue - the video card had a downloadable fix, as
well as one of my base devices. So while I still have two
unrecognizable base devices, the PC is working fine so far.
Adding 64-bit W7 and doubling my RAM to 4GB has made this
run much smoother than the 32-bit Vista machine it was
purchased as. Now about those other 2 base devices..... |
| pomonasi on October 29, 2009 12:28 PM | felt kind of stupid when i had to call tech
support... when doing a clean install with student upgrade, i didnt realize you dont put in the product key when they ask for it during the installation. just go through the process without it and follow the steps from this site and that will do it. i kept trying to install with my product key and got an error. |
| huffy49 on October 29, 2009 9:58 PM | We'll be upgrading our Vista 64 bit machine to Win7 month. Hopefully it will be less annoying afterward. |
| GACrabill on October 29, 2009 10:25 PM | Very nice article ... thanks. All the information in one place with links to additional information IF NEEDED makes it much easier to read and not get bogged down in an article that goes on and on discussing things that one may already know. I am going to need this knowledge sooner than I would like, so I now know where to go to get it. |
| thunder5632 on October 30, 2009 5:09 AM | Saving up money to buy this one. Heard so much positive comments on this :-) |
| kodrutz on October 30, 2009 12:15 PM | I think there are some Windows 7 parts really overrated, especially the interface. After all, it still doesn't have a decent file manager, but it's good they solved the performance issues everyone had with Vista. I will probably move on to Windows 7 in a few months, if user reports are going to remain as positive as it happened so far. After all, I had Vista for over 2 years now, but I only used it probably less than 2% of the time I spent with Windows XP... |
| shalimar on October 30, 2009 6:04 PM | Once again TS shows why it's an excellent resource for the public. I work in IT for a living and have for more years than I care to admit.. For the newbie W7 q's though I just send people here to learn instead of re-iterating it myself. |
| bigd353 on October 31, 2009 4:09 AM | Did an HP "factory" Win7 upgrade to an i7-920 PC today. Added another 640GB drive and now I dual boot. The longest part of the upgrade was formatting the drive! It was good to have this article for all of the background info. Good job TS! |
| k0eff on November 1, 2009 5:53 AM | Good job microsoft. Finally better OS than XP. With Windows 7 I not need drivers disk on my desktop system. W7 installed all drivers automatically, some of them through windows update. Hp laptop missed softkey driver, and one sony vaio need drivers just for cardreader. Excellent! |
| MBK on November 3, 2009 6:35 PM | Very helpful guide. Got Windows 7 recently and this really helped me get some more out of it. Thank you techspot! |
| ShariC on November 4, 2009 10:09 AM | A fabulous, helpful article. It cuts thru the fog of the options and which path to take. Helped me tremendously! |
