Ross Kodner: Wait Until Your Computer Dies Before Getting Windows 7
Tech expert Ross Kodner of Microlaw gave the most dim, faint praise for Windows 7 I've heard to date. At best he said it's "sort of" time to upgrade your Windows XP computer to Windows 7. Basically he advised lawyers at ABA Techshow in Chicago to keep those XP computers running until they die.
Then, Kodner said, you should buy a brand new computer that has Windows 7 already on it. There is no way to upgrade from XP to 7. Windows 7 must be installed on "bare metal" on a computer hard drive. Even worse, your new Windows 7 computer license is unique to the machine and dies with the computer.
He did think Microsoft "got it right" with Windows 7, but the new features are few and far between:
- You can collect related documents and pictures in different folders into a "library."
- There is a good backup and restore function.
- You can show a mini-view of running software using a "peek" feature.
- You can minimize other programs by grabbing the top bar of the program you want to stay maximized, and "shake it."
That's about it. There is no compelling reason to get Windows 7.
Windows 7 won't run many of your old programs, unless you computer has 8 GIGs of RAM and you download software to run a "Virtual XP" mode. But then you are running one operating system on top of another one, you must restart your computer, and you have to close most other running programs to run your old software.
IMHO, you're nuts to get Windows 7 unless your computer dies. There is some hope because Ross said Microsoft will continue selling XP until June 2011. By then we won't need operating systems because we'll be using cloud computing on the Web and won't need to install any software at all. You can do this already -- you don't need Microsoft Office, because Google Apps offers email, an online calendar, Google docs, spreadsheets and slides shows for free.
