There has been much buzz about the new Windows 7 Operating System from Microsoft not only in the tech community but also the general public. IT is supposed to be the “holy grail” of Windows operating systems and is supposed to remedy all the issues that Windows Vista was plagued with. Windows 7 comes with a few new visual effects and enhancements that Windows Vista didn’t have. Most of the features are designed to enhance productivity such as the window snapping at the top and sides of the screen and a better management of multiple windows open within the same programs. The kernel has some modifications to enhance stability and performance. All in all due to Microsoft’s ad campaigns the launch of Windows 7 was pretty widely accepted.

Every day I still hear horror stories and complaints about Windows Vista with it being slow, buggy, and unstable. Granted when Windows XP came out it was very unstable and the Windows 2000 fan-boys swore to stick to their OS just like the Windows XP fan-boys stuck to their OS when Windows Vista came out. But no one remembers the failure of Windows XP when it was first released like when Windows Vista was released. This could be due to Apple’s snide and spiteful ad campaigns or just bad press in general but the fact of the matter is that Windows 7 had a huge head start on Vista.

One of the major complaints that people had with Windows Vista was the hardware support. When Joe average computer user went to buy a new computer that came pre-loaded with Windows Vista instead of Windows XP he found that his printer and scanner from 1994 did not work with the modern operating system. So instead of blaming the manufacturers of the products they immediately blamed it on the operating system itself.

Now Windows Vista has been out for almost 4 years already. Most people don’t realize that. The good thing that came out of Vista being released in 32bit and 64bit is that it pushed hardware and software manufacturers to start releasing support (like drivers and patches) for the 64bit operating systems. Now since the NT7 kernel that Windows 7 is based on has a very similar hardware stack that Vista’s NT6 kernel has most of the drivers that were designed to run on Windows Vista ran and installed fine on Windows 7. This made Windows 7 seem like it had better hardware support than Vista due to the legwork that manufacturers had already done because of Vista’s launch 4 years ago.

I am not saying that Windows 7 is not a better operating system than Windows Vista because it is better. Windows 7 scales far better on lower end computer systems such as net-books or that Pentium 4 computer that grandma and grandpa have. This is due to the major kernel and feature overhaul that went on with Windows 7. If you remember shortly, lets say 6 months, after Windows Vista was released there was already talk of Windows 7 coming out in a few years. Microsoft better prepared and tested Windows 7 since they had the buffer time of the Windows Vista lifetime.

I personally have no problems with Vista. It could also have something to do with making sure my systems are fully stacked with powerful CPU’s and plenty of RAM to run the most unruly of operating systems. I have since converted both my systems to Windows 7 and don’t miss Vista that much since 7 is a little bit faster but then again I thought the same about Vista. :)