Unfortunately, Windows Vista stood as much chance surviving the negative press as did disco against the “Disco Sucks” campaign in the late 1970’s.

Though Vista users will recognize most of the latest operating system from Microsoft, they will not recognize, but will appreciate, the very fast boot time. I think I recall a fast boot time like this back when I used Windows 3.11.

I am writing this blog using the same laptop, now upgraded to a beta version of Windows 7 (Build 7000) and despite the newer operating system, the computer (an HP Pavillion notebook with AMD Turion 64 bit 1.8Ghz processor and a mere 1Gb of RAM) is not struggling to keep up.

And it’s not a mirage that the desktop came to life from a cold boot either since the give away is typically the hard disk light which can remain so steady you might confuse it for the power light. Instead, it mimicked my heart beat of the tread mill then whined down to an occasional blink after just 2 minutes.

Equipped with Internet Explorer 8.0, I was surprised to see how responsive it was to calling up an application shortly after seeing the desktop.

With the exception of Skype, all of my previous software was accepted by the upgrade wizard. This includes Firefox 3.0, Word 2007, and iTunes 8.0.

If there was ever an upgrade version of any software, especially an operating system, then Windows 7 is it. Only, and I must emphasize this, only if your computer had Windows Vista on it, factory-shipped.

Cheers,
Richard D. Lee