David McKillen WebStrategies Inc.

I'm just a regular Joe - so should I upgrade to Windows 7? Well that's a good question.

I decided to make the upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 today. I haven't really had too many problems with Vista to be honest. Maybe it's just because I know how to trouble shoot problems and so never consciously run into any big headaches.

Nonetheless I felt it was time to upgrade. I checked out the list of features across the 3 upgrade options and decided to go with the most basic option (Windows 7 Home Premium) purely because I wouldn't need to use business networking backup/syncing, run XP productivity programs, use Bitlocker or possess X-ray vision - that last one was a joke :). I knew I didn't want to spend $200 on what essentially might turn out to be Vista Service pack 2 from what people say so I checked out Amazon's reseller options and found a deal for $75 and figured I'd give Home Premium a chance.

I started at noon and finished about 5 hours later. That is, on a fully functioning development machine I upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 keeping all my favorite complicated software and work files intact. I'm sitting here trying my best to see if something didn't work right but so far everything is working smoothly. I'm running 10 heavy applications at the same time and nothing is slowing. Also all apps started up almost immediately for me and shut down just as quickly and overall it's certainly a little prettier still than Vista.

I haven't run into any compatibility issues with software both old and new which surprised me as I do have some older freebie programs that I thought might die (but then I thought they would die in Vista too and they didn't). I wonder how much of Window 7's success is based on the fact that most Vista users have already sorted out most of the problems that Vista had - then again I haven't heard too much moaning from friends that upgraded directly from XP, so that theory goes out the window.

Ultimately the long and the short of it is that Windows 7 really is just Vista done right. There's nothing there that's going to blow your socks off and for some maybe not even enough to be worth the upgrade. However if you can find a deal online, it might be worth it to have your apps load faster and have far less bugs to contend with. In a nutshell - Windows 7 seems like a terrific upgrade and I'm happy I did it! It's my favorite OS to date.

David McKillen WebStrategies Inc.