Us Geeks over here at TAG are using Windows 7 (W7) and I’m happy to report the honeymoon isn’t over!

    In last month’s newsletter I reported that we were thrilled with Windows 7’s performance, ease of use, security, and stability and that you Vista haters will be happy to know that Windows 7 is lightning fast compared to Vista. 

     Our observations since my last report:Upgrade from XP or Vista to W7 – Although Microsoft does provide the option to complete an in-place upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, this approach has never been considered best practices within the IT professional community.  However we wanted to test this for ourselves, so we took a good stable install of Vista and completed an in-place upgrade to Windows 7.  This process took several hours and was  a success; however the performance of the upgraded system was worse than it was with Vista.   The next step was completing a format and fresh install of Windows 7.  This dramatically improved the system performance.  This experience once again proves that when upgrading an operating system it’s best to complete a fresh install.  An in-place upgrade is not possible from XP.  A fresh install is required if the hardware supports Windows 7.

Usability – Within TAG’s office we standardized to Windows 7 Business (32 & 64 bit) versions with MS Office 2007 and all has gone very well. The look and feel has definitely changed in comparison to XP but is very similar to Vista.  It has many new features that let you hop around the system more quickly and offers a lot more customization of menus and gadgets that can make you more productive.

USB Devices  – Windows 7 improves access and management of USB devices.  For example, when I plugged in a USB drive and started copying a large amount of data, Windows made a recommendation that I connect the USB drive to a different physical port that would be faster.  When I changed ports, my copy time was cut in half.