Should I Skip Windows Vista and Wait for Windows 7?

by Oscar Sodani

December 3, 2008

Oscar Sodani is a founder of Help2Go and owner of Help2Go Networks, an IT consulting firm in the Washington D.C. area. Oscar holds the CISSP certification as well as industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell.

Many people are still using Windows XP very happily. Will all of the negative attention surrounding Windows Vista, there is no doubt that it was Microsoft biggest operating system failure ever (or maybe since Windows ME). Microsoft has poured millions into advertising and has fixed many of Vista's problems, but should you make the switch now or wait until Windows 7 in 2009?

Vista or Windows 7: New PC

If you are buying a new PC, it will most likely come with Windows Vista. At this point in Vista's life, it has been fixed enough so that you can feel reasonably confident that it will work well with your new PC. When Windows 7 comes out, you can make the upgrade then.

Vista or Windows 7: Old PC

However, if you are considering uprading your current Windows XP PC to Vista - the answer is WAIT! Here's why:

First, Windows 7 is not a really a brand new version of Windows. At it's core, it is Windows Vista. But think of Vista as the beta version of Windows 7 - it's the same core architecture, but they went through the code from the bottom up to make speed and memory improvements in every phase of the software. Frankly, Windows 7 is what Vista should have been when it was released. Microsoft rushed the product and the result was the debacle we see now.

Windows 7 is very close to being released - the beta is already due out in January. There's no point in spending money on Vista now if you'll just have to upgrade again (for the fixed version) next year.

In terms of features, you're not going to see a lot of cool new features in Windows 7, but the features they do have are going to work correctly. There are some neat UI fixes - check out this article on 10 things to look forward to in Windows 7 - but overall we're talking about bug fixes and speed improvements. In fact, the early pre-release "builds" of Windows 7 are already faster than Vista!

For a fantastic rundown about what Windows 7 is and why it will be a big improvement on Vista, check out this TWIT podcast (This Week in Tech).

And if you want to experience some of Windows 7's new features a bit early, this Lifehacker article is a great resource.

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