I spent an evening earlier this week upgrading my laptop from Windows Vista to Windows 7. I can honestly say that Windows 7 is an excellent operating system and my first few days’ worth of “real-world” usage has been a very pleasing experience. It is fast, slick and better than Vista in almost every way.
The upgrade experience on my Dell XPS laptop was also pretty straightforward, but took a lot longer than I thought it would (~7 hours from start to finish).
I considered very carefully before I started whether I wanted a clean installation or an upgrade, but I couldn’t face the prospect of reinstalling all my programs, so went for the upgrade option. The setup program sensibly advises you to backup all your documents and personal data first, but I thought I’d risk it anyway.
The setup program then checks for any programs you already have installed that may be incompatible with Windows 7. Annoyingly, one of the programs it flagged up was my anti-virus/firewall program, Kaspersky Internet Security. I checked the Kaspersky website and sure enough, they don’t as yet have a Windows 7-compatible version ready. In order to proceed with the upgrade, I had to completely uninstall the product (even though I still had 111 days of my subscription remaining).
From then on, the upgrade was trouble-free and I have replaced Kaspersky with Microsoft Security Essentials for the time being.
New features I like in Windows 7 include the new taskbar, with the real-time preview and “jump lists” to common tasks over each running program. I also like the Action Center, a “one-stop shop” for system settings and alerts, which were dotted about all over the place in Vista.
The Windows Vista sidebar, which took a ridiculously long time to start up has also gone, but they’ve kept the gadgets, which you can now place anywhere on the desktop.
There’s a lot more to like in Windows 7, such as Windows XP Mode and the revamped Device Center. I’ll write more about these features over the next few weeks as and when I get an opportunity to investigate them in more detail.