10 reasons to upgrade to Windows 7

I never purchased Windows Vista but from what I've read Windows 7 is looking to be really good, and it'll be nice to see Microsoft put out something really successful again. Quick boot time and as little annoyance to the user as possible is the most important part of an OS, and it looks like Windows 7 has all this and more. An article here in Norwegian has ten reasons to get Windows 7 so I'll list them here too (not a translation but a summary of the points).

1) Virtual XP mode - now there's no need to worry about software that can only run in XP, because with this mode you can just switch back to a virtual XP mode whenever you need to run them.

2) Faster installation, faster startup and clean UI
Windows 7 installation took almost 20 minutes for the person that wrote the article in Norwegian, one third of the time it took to install Vista. Startup time also takes less time than both XP and Vista, and the user environment is much more comfortable and attractive than XP.

3) Good support for network PCs - network PCs are popular for their low price, mobility and low power consumption, and Windows 7 will be available in customized versions for them.

4) You can uninstall Windows components - tired of Windows Media Player for example? Get rid of it.

5) Better driver and application support - do you have any devices in XP or Vista shown as "unknown device"? In Windows 7 most componants can be supported "out of the box", so that you don't need to fiddle with a bunch of different driver CDs to get your componants to work as they should. Known standard components will as a rule work right after installation.

6) Better calculator, drawing and writing programs - Calculator, Paint and Wordpad have been redesigned, and the two latter have an interface like that of Office 2007.

7) Less unnecessary add-on programs: those that have bought PCs from HP, Acer and so on know well how many unnecessary programs there are on these PCs that weigh them down. This has been removed for Windows 7 and instead can be downloaded as an option. (note: no idea how this works in practice. Let me know in the comments section below if you know how this is going to work)

8) Better user account control - no idea what this part is about as it's talking about some annoying feature in vista re: user accounts that almost nobody uses...but Windows 7 allows you to control the "aggressiveness" of this.

9) New features in Aero - fun stuff with making windows transparent, switching screens and whatnot. The article includes this video that shows just what these are:




10) Problem Steps Recorder (PSR) - I like this feature a lot. It allows you to record exactly how you've arrived at a problem by recording every action you take, whereupon you can just send this to someone else who can then see how the problem occurred without having to rely on your explanation of how it happened. That's the difference between trying to explain to someone what someone else said and having a recording of exactly what they did say.