I’ve been using Windows 7 for a while now. It’s been stable, easy to configure and a pleasure to use. Some of the hidden gems have made me take time to explore the operating system and learn more about its capabilities. I didn’t have that motivation with Vista. From the smallest things like keyboard shortcuts and personalization to creating your own MMC consoles, there’s something here for everyone. If firms have the budget and resources for this migration, Windows 7 should prove to be a popular deployment.

Buy a Mac :-)

I have a mac, are you suggesting that I install Windows 7 on it as well?

The utilisation of the toolbar area of Win7 is much better than Vista or indeed Mac OS/X and I say that as an avid Mac user. How much difference does that make? Little if you are a one/two application user but for those using many windows this is is the closest thing to joy on the Windows Platform since 3.11

My machine boots up in just over half the time (ignoring power on tests) and while some of that improvement has to be due to a clean install of Win7-64 to replace the Vista-32 that preceeded it, you have to believe there are significant performance gains built in.

Been using it for a few weeks now and it really is very good.

>>he utilisation of the toolbar area of Win7 is much better than Vista or indeed Mac OS/X and I say that as an avid Mac user<<

Google and download Quicksilver, make sure you RTFM, turn off the dock and OSX will be the fastest most productive environment you can imagine.

Well the software said requires Windows Vista or higher...so I bought a Mac.

Mac's are no doubt good machines if you're in publishing or editing movies but for regular business you can't go past PC given market share. I note that the latest macs have been released at an 'almost' competitive price given their spec though so perhaps we'll see more macs turn up in business over coming years. i'd imagine in order to do so they'll have to reduce quality and so become more akin to PCs anyway.

Windows 7 is a far superior system to Vista and finally rivals the mac os in form and functionality. I agree with the first post - there are heaps of very cool new things in 7. All of that aside it's stable, MUCH faster, search and indexing is excellent, usability is excellent and though there are still some bugs they seem to be intermittent. At last - a full reboot from clicking restart to surfing the web in under a minute on a fully spec'd machine.

For anyone who is on Vista, I would strongly recommend they look at upgrading to Windows 7 as Vista performs poorly, is buggy and is recognised by all professional IT people as not being a good operating system to use.

Windows 7 in contrast is recognised by professional IT people as being a stable and reliable operating system.

For those on Windows XP - it is probably not worthwhile upgrading- but if you are buying a new computer then do purchase Windows 7.

A more "interesting" issue is whether to go for Windows 7 64 bit or Windows 7 32 bit - some older printers / other peripheral devices may not work on 64 bit Windows.

I echo the sentiments above. I've been using Win 7 since Beta and it's way better than Vista. I'd love to have a Mac but they're not cheap and I like the flexibility I get with hardware. I'll be sticking with PCs for now and when I do feel the need for a Unix like OS I boot up a Linux distro.

One point I'd make is that I'd go further than to say "some older printers / other peripheral devices may not work on 64-bit Windows". Do your homework!! Make sure you have all the necessary 64-bit drivers before you start the upgrade process. You can't use a 32-bit driver and there are some newer devices which don't have 64-bit drivers yet. The last thing you want is to think you've finished your OS install (which is actually quite slick now!) only to have to wind back to 32-bit because something isn't working!

Gosh this is gripping stuff, sitting on the edge of my seat with excitement for the next installment....

I would have thought the crucial question would have been which Legal software providers support Windows 7? Which suppliers have tested their software and which are holding their clients back on Wndows XP due to their lack of foresight?

Peapod LEGALOffice have tested our systems on windows 7 and even have a couple of clients using it. Our software is also fully compatible with Windows Vista.

Since you asked :)