Windows 7

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Windows 7 has been around a while in Beta but has had about a week of life in the consumer world so how is it getting on?

With Apple recently releasing Snow Leopard, Ubuntu impressing with its not-so-well-know Karmic Koala and Google due to launch their desktop OS next year, Microsoft are probably in a make-or-break time for windows as we know it.

With Ubuntu gaining followers all the time, it is now seen as less fragile, more user friendly and a real threat to Windows and OSX for mainstream use. Available as a pre-install OS and boasting an impressive range of open source applications, many users who don't need to access OS prohibitive apps like Visual Studio, Adobe CS* and Office (For you Geeks, yes, Mono lets you run .NET apps on Linux, Wine is supposed to let you run some Adobe stuff and Open Office is a one-for-one office replacement) will fine that Ubuntu (and indeed most Linux based OS's) will let you do just about anything a Windows or OSX PC can. With the speed at which cloud apps are being developed, the need to comply to a standard set of GUI libraries is reduced even further.

So what is the advantage of a Mac or a Windows PC? Seriously, if you don't run games or productivity that is tied in to a specific OS, there isn't one. All the benefits of owning a Mac over a PC, like speed (honestly, they are quicker at many common processes. Firefox and Filezilla, which I use all the time on both PC and Mac, are a lot faster on the Mac), security and cool looks are kinda negated by the cost of a Mac when you compre it to a PC. If you compare it to something like Ubuntu, which is essentially free, well, it's clear that there is a new kid in [mainstream] town.

Ok, enough about the competition, what's Windows 7 doing a week in?

Well, scouting the usual suspect for signs of the [Windows] ne'er do wells and malcontents, nothing seriously amiss is being reported.

The Register does mention a few complaints about a promised browser choice option, but that seems to be about as bad as it gets there. Read the article on The Rgister.

There is far more buzz about all the new features in Windows 7 than about any teething problems. It seems that, as far as I can tell, Windows 7 has many really cool new features, is faster than Vista and probably faster than XP, is far more compatable with existing applications that Vista was and is facing far fewer hardware issues that previous versions of Windows.

So, all in all, it's been a good week for Windows 7 and Microsoft.

For more information:

Check Windows 7 out at the official Windows 7 web site

Check Snow Leopard out at Apple's web site

Check Ubuntu out at www.ubuntu.com

Other Linux builds can be found at distro watch