Is Your Computer Ready for Windows 7?

Microsoft announced a special Windows 7 pre-order program today that offers the company’s newest operating system at a DEEPLY discounted price.  But is your computer ready for Windows 7?

There are two basic camps of people who will be upgrading to Windows 7 – Vista users and XP users (Windows 2000 users can also technically upgrade, but in many cases their hardware is so old that ot will be incompatible).

Testing Windows Vista PCs for an Upgrade to Windows 7

Vista users will have a pretty easy time upgrading to Windows 7.  Microsoft is promising that everything that works with Vista will work with Windows 7.

When you run the upgrade disk, Windows 7 moves all of your documents, settings, registry, and programs to a holding directory.  It then installs a clean copy of Windows 7 and copies all of your information back over.  This eliminates many of the layered operating system problems that plagued XP and older upgrades.

In theory, everything should just work after the installation, but if you want that extra measure of comfort, you can run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to check for any issues.

Testing Windows XP PCs for an Upgrade to Windows 7

Windows XP users will have a bit of a tougher time upgrading.

It is HIGHLY recommended that you ru the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.  There is a good chance that some of your hardware and/or software will not be compatible with Windows 7.

As a rule of thumb, if your software is not compatible with Vista, it will not be compatible with Windows 7.

With that said, the business and Ultimate versions of Windows 7 have a special feature that allows you to download and run a virtualized copy of Windows XP from within Windows 7.

Think of it like running Windows XP as if it was a program, and then opening up other programs from within it.  This will allow business users who rely on older software (and lazier IT staffs) to still run many of their old XP programs in a limited form.  There is no additional charge for the virtualized XP download.