Windows 7 has Arrived!

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Windows 7 has arrived!

By Joseph Rogina

And the question I get asked all the time is, “Is it time to upgrade my office?” Windows 7 offers a really nice user interface and will work on many of your workstations where Windows Vista would not. This, however, is not reason enough to upgrade. I have been running Windows 7 on a notebook since before the Release Candidate. I love the look and feel, but it took a lot of work to finally get it working properly. Why? Because of the issues listed below.

Whether we’re talking about a home PC or an office PC, I would definitely recommend researching before an upgrade. If you are running Windows Vista already, an upgrade is the way to go. Regardless, you will want to know what you are getting into ahead of time. For that, you will want to run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.  This will let you know if the PC in question is capable of running Windows 7 and will give you recommendations about possible hardware upgrades that should be made before installing the new OS.

For any PC user, your day-to-day computer use consists of running a certain selection of applications. I would recommend looking into these applications to be sure that the versions you have are compatible with Windows 7. For example, you may need to upgrade your versions of Photoshop, Firefox, etc. before they will work on Windows 7.

The PC’s hardware may be an issue as well. If you are running Windows Vista and everything is ok, then all your hardware should be fine. If you are running Windows XP, however, you may very well have hardware that is not compatible with Windows 7. You will want to look at the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor results to determine which, if any, hardware will have issues, then look at the hardware manufacturer’s website to see if they have an updated driver. The easiest way to eliminate the hardware from the equation is to just purchase a new PC that already has Windows 7 running on it.

The next step would be to determine which version of Windows 7 is right for you. If you are upgrading from Vista, you are limited to what version you can use. Look at the Windows Upgrade Considerations page to see what upgrades you are eligible for. If you are doing a clean install, you can pick from any of the versions that meet your requirements. See the Windows 7 Compare Editions page to see what they offer. 

Too busy to concern yourself with all of this? Don’t give up. Contact dmi Networking with any questions you may have. Our trained helpful technicians will be glad to help out! Give us a call at (707) 523-5915 to schedule an appointment. We can also be reached at contact@dmiNetworking.com