Last year I finally bit the bullet and switched from XP to Vista. It was a painful choice, but I learned to like the operating system. It was a LOT more secure than XP and while I hated some of the nagging I got from the User Account Control (which I eventually turned off) I found that the program generally worked well. When Windows 7 came out as a beta, I imaged the old Vista-based system and tried Windows 7. I only stayed with it for a few days then went back to Vista. But when the release candidate of Windows 7 came out I tried it and have used it for several months now. Compatability with older applications is better, driver support is excellent, and UAC is turned down. The new operating system is faster than Vista, looks even better and has several new features that make XP look like a dinosaur.

However, this isn’t a change for everyone – if you’re going to be upgrading a old system that has a lot of applications from the past you may have issues. Certainly the hardware requirements for Vista and 7 are greater than that for XP. You could run XP on a machine with as little as 64 MB of memory, 233 MHz processor and 1.5 to 2.5 GB of hard disk space. Vista takes that to 512 MB of memory, 800 MHz processor and 20 GB of hard disk space. And Windows 7 requires 1 GB of memory, 1 GHz processor and 16 GB of hard disk space. (And in every case more memory, a faster processor and a bigger hard drive will make it a lot more useful…) So if you have a system that’s 6 or 7 years old you’re probably not going to meet those requirements. And it would cost you more to upgrade that old PC (if you could considering how much computers have changed in that time) to Windows Vista or 7 level than it would to buy a brand new box. But buying a new Windows 7 system can be done for $500 or less. That means EVERYTHING will run faster (bigger hard disk, faster processor, faster and more memory) for much less than that old PC. Our younger brother can’t upgrade to Vista or 7 (the computer you gave him and the used one he purchased to replace it are both too old and too limited to bring to those standards) and he can probably get by for several years with XP. But you’re talking about a 8 year-old OS with XP versus 3 years with Vista and a brand new OS with Windows 7. How much has changed in 8 years? Everything is taking advantage of faster computers and the additional memory that today’s systems are using. You had to leave MS-DOS, Windows 98 and your old applications behind before and XP won’t be any different.

Bottom line, moving forward will become a requirement for everyone at some point.