Well, I decided to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, and I can actually say "upgrade" without laughing hysterically (such as in Vista's case). All joking aside, Win7 is definitely an improvement, and I say that in reference not only to Vista but also XP. I personally never owned a computer with Vista on it, but I had my fair share of time with its horribleness and I must say that Win7 is undoubtedly 10x better if not 100x. Even from XP there are huge improvements, one specific one is boot time (Vista was bad too but this is a personal account). My XP boot time was pushing 00:06:38 (that's hours, minutes, and seconds respectively), whereas my Win7 boot time is around 00:01:10. Yes it is a fresh install and a reformatted HDD but still that is fast. On the same topic is the quick but awesome fact that once I am logged in I can click a program and it will come up immediately, unlike XP which took 5 more minutes to launch Mozilla after the initial boot and login. I also upgraded to the 64bit version so that my computer can finally recognize all 6GB of my RAM! yay! Not to mention that it is clocked at 1600MHz so it is blazing fast. Obviously, the new "Aero Effects" are awesome too, and they are so pretty! Yes I am actually saying “pretty” with glee and happiness mainly because it makes my OCD happy but hey, whatever works. Everything is so good looking and smooth without taking up too many resources. Well... at least for me they don't, but I have a Quad core with 6GB of RAM and two 9800GTX's in SLI so ya... One other honorable note to mention is the way the data packets are handled in Win7. Basically, when I was transferring a file in XP it would do an average of 25MB/s with a max of about 50MB/s. Win7 however, can reach up to 120MB/s and sustain that and has an average of 60MB/s! I didn't believe it when I saw it but I did the math and it was right (this is using large files between two separate drives that are not in any sort of RAID configuration). These and many more things make up the good part of Win7, but I must move on to the bad things about Win7. Yes yes I know... so sad that there are bad things, but that's how it is with everything.
So far the only glitches that I have come across are: 1-A small sound interruption when installing programs (Most likely caused by UAC). So basically if you are playing music and you start to install something, your sound will scratch/cut out for just a second. 2- Random disappearance of window picture on taskbar. This one is a bit harder to explain, but basically the little previews you see when holding your mouse over the folder button, or any other program with multiple windows for that matter, tend to disappear periodically. I found a way to make it happen less often (and less sporadically) by going into Control Panel/System then clicking advanced system settings, once that window comes up click the settings button under performance and then enable the option that says "Save taskbar thumbnail previews"(take note that I do not know how this will affect overall system performance, I mean it is disabled by default...). After that is enabled, they tend to only disappear after having launched a graphic intensive program or locking the computer for extended periods of time. Other than that there is not much wrong with the OS. I will be keeping a list of all the glitches I find though, just so all of you know.
In the end, Win7 is definitely an awesome OS. I dunno, maybe it's because I have been on XP for 10 years and when Vista came out it only seemed worse, but either way it is definitely a good forward step for Microsoft and I can't wait to see what else they improve/add to it.
PS- I was going to do a Pro/ Con list but I decided against it due to the sheer amount of pros when comparing Win7 to Vista. Just keep in mind that Win7 is stable and it is not even on the same plane as far as bugs/issues as Vista. Overall it is a great OS and I am very pleased with it. It gets my official seal of approval (you know, the one I don't have).
