If you “preorder” Windows 7 by July 11, 2009, you can upgrade to the best Microsoft OS (for the average user) since Windows 2000 Pro. I’ve been using Win7 since the general beta release early this year and it’s been an overall pleasant experience. Right up there with a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.04, IMO. For someone who’s committed to using Windows, for whatever reason, if your hardware meets the basic requirements, the deal’s a steal. Better, IMO, than either XP or Vista, at $50 to upgrade there’s little reason for a dedicated Windows user to skip this one.
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See the M$ order page here. And no, M$ doesn’t give me a dime for my opinions or for your purchase, should you buy.
If you want to jump ship from the M$ juggernaut, try Ubuntu or PC-BSD.
Do you know if Home Premium supports VPN connections? Need that for work.
Woody,
Home Premium doesn’t support M$’s version of VPN hosting (Remote Desktop Host) but Win7 Professional does. The Win7 Pro upgrade is $100, and does include other neat goodies like Remote Desktop Host and Windows XP Mode that allows absolute compatibility with older WinXP apps (although I’ve not found any WinXP apps yet–in my use–that I can’t run. I know some accounting apps that require specific versions of Windows). Still, there are several really remarkably usable implementations of VNC that are not only usable with any Windows version buyt are also cross-platform, and VNC is, IMO, as good as M$’s Remote Desktop Host. Other solutions–free and not–abound as well. Still, if your work is already solid with M$’s VPN solution, $100 is still a really attractive upgrade price for upgrading to Win7 Pro, since the Home Premium upgrade will be $118 after July 11.
We use Windows SBS on our three servers at my company, and Windows XP Home would not connect because of the lack of VPN support. Need it to remotely connect to my servers and client desktops. The chart is handy, but still not entirely clear… Is Windows Server Domain what I need? Hmmm…
Yeh, then Win7 Pro is the way to go for remote computing with your setup, I’d think. And at a $100 upgrade cost, if the hardware’s up to it (and with lower real world hardware requirements than Vista it ought to be), it may well be a Good Thing. I like the Bitlocker and other security features in the Pro version, especially for business.
Well I’m broke and my old PC isn’t really up to an upgrade so I’ll have to pass for now… Would love to get some new hardware, but it’s not in the cards in this Obama-economy.
I’m even having trouble keeping Vista running well. Worked great at first, but seems to have gotten slower and slower. Time for a wipe & clean install probably.
Woody,
Before you do a wipe n reinstall, try some simple houskeeping. CCleaner is pretty good at cleaning out the crap but DO allow its default behavior of backing up the registry before making changes! I’ve never had it cause Windows to bork, but there could be a first time. Another decent crap cleaner for non-technical use is Advanced Windows Care Personal from IObit.om. Both CCleaner and AWCP are freebie apps, so even in “the Obama economy” they’re a decent thing to try. Now, these aren’t cure-all apps, but they have provided low-cost alternatives for some clients over having me do a wipe n reinstall, then reconfigure with all their apps, etc., and it could save you some time. If you don’t mind my asking, what hardware limits are you coming up against? 1Ghz processors and a gig or two of RAM are kinda low requirements nowadays–lower than Vista needs. I have one computer with just 4GB RAM that is a barn burner with Win7–easily as responsive as with any of the Linux variants I have used on it. I’d like to have more memory (and a graphics processor as good as on this one) in it as well, but as you say, it’s the economy… I just don’t see spending more just because I could when saving against a total collapse (“saving” as in putting more into home improvements, emergency preparedness, health and etc.) seems a better bet right now. Need a new car in the family, too, but we’re shopping for just the right USED car we can just pay cash for instead. I’ve popped for the $50 preorder for my Wonder Woman’s three-year-old XP notebook, since the 2Ghz single core processor and 4Gb of RAM (one is dedicated to video processing) are plenty good enough for Win7 32-bit.
It’s an older PC, bought it in 2001 I think… maybe 2002. 3 GHz Pentium, 1 GB Ram and a 2.6 Win Exp rating. According to the Win Exp thingy I’m okay on everything except the video card. I usually keep Aero turned off to help speed it up a bit.
Thanks for those links. I’ll probably still do a full wipe, because I set the partition for the OS too low. The OS grows with every patch and update and my root drive keeps giving me “out of space” warnings. Kind of screwed that up when I set up the original Vista install I guess.
Woody,
The PC you describe would likely have a WinExp rating somewhere in the 3s with Win7. Yeh, turning Aero off would even help there. Eye candy really isn’t all it’s cracked up toi be anyway. A better video card is always a good thing, IMO… up to a limit (which I’ve reached for myself; I don’t play action games on my computers, so my “biggest-bestest” is just a 1GB DDR2 vidcard, with others less capable. Got it for well under $100, so it just about hit my sweet spot for browsing, word processing and basic graphics and video processing).
Much of the OS partition’s growth on a Windows computer is due to massive amounts of patches and updates, all of them leaving the original downloaded files and uninstall info in your Windows folder. Try backing up all the patches and updates to CDs or a DVD and then deleting them from your Windows folder. You’ll likely free up gigs of space. If you ever need to uninstall an update, you can just copy its uninstall folder back to the Windows folder.
Another thing that causes problems is swap files and registry files that are never defragged (because they are in use and locked while Windows is running). Microsoft bought Mark Russinovich’s utilities that do that kind of work and offers them free.
The Sysinternals Suite is here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062.aspx
Pagedefrag (for page files and registry hives) is here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspx
Pagedefrag alone can make a Windows computer much more stable and nimble.
I made a seperate disk partition for my pagefile, but I’ll check out the other one. Thanks for the free advice and the links my friend!
Woody,
Good on you! I like my pagefiles on Windows systems to be on a separate DRIVE from my OS, and even from my data if I have enough drives available (and I usually do *heh*)–my fastest drive. But even with a separate disk partition for your paging file, Pagedefrag can help a great deal, since the pagefile can still become fragmented within the partition. And the fact that it defrags registry hives is a real plus! When you’ve cleaned out deadwood from your registry using CCleaner, for example, the need for defragging the hives becomes even more obvious. M$ bought out Mark Russinovich and hired him for a good reason: his tools are really very, very good. 🙂