Small Business Tech Tips

You’ve no doubt heard a lot about Windows 7 over the last few months; it’s the fastest selling operating system in history. You may be wondering if it has something new and compelling that you may want or need at your small business.

Here’s what you need to know:

Evolution, not a revolution. That’s how Bill Gates described Windows 7. Vista was meant to be a revolution, but some revolutions flop – which is exactly what Vista did when it hit the market. Vista was plagued with bugs, and most businesses were told to stay as far away as they could from it; most choosing to stay in Windows XP while they waited for the release of Windows 7.

Windows 7 is what Vista was supposed to be. Windows 7 is an evolution of Vista. It’s what Vista was originally intended to be when Microsoft released it into the marketplace. Vista was an ambitious revolution, but it didn’t live up to its hype. Windows 7 is essentially a battle-tested version of Vista, designed to fix all of the problems that made it struggle.

If you happen to be using Vista, then the core benefits of Windows 7 are that everything actually works the way it’s supposed to! You won’t really notice a whole lot of meaningful new capabilities that will strike you as “must haves,” but the problems that you have likely experienced with Vista are fixed.

No “must haves.”  For those of you still working on Windows XP, it’s hard to say that Windows 7 will have any “must haves” for you either, but there is a better chance. For most, Windows 7 will be much faster to start up, will extend the battery life of your laptop significantly longer, and provides better security control. But otherwise, the majority of tests indicate that your core applications will probably not perform that differently in Windows 7 than they do in Windows XP.

Is it “cool” enough? It seems somewhat silly to say, but the biggest benefit of Windows 7 may be that it seems “cool” compared to Windows XP – it’s a sleek design that seems much more interesting and peppy. But that may not be enough to justify the significant investment required to get it!

So, should small business owners skip the upgrade to Windows 7? Not necessarily. But that’s the topic of my next post on Windows 7 – coming soon!

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Read more by: Mike Cooch

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, small business, upgrade to windows 7, Windows 7

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 14th, 2010 at 11:37 am and is filed under Small Business Computer Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.