Windows 7 should I upgrade?

Windows 7 for human begins "Should I upgrade"

If you have the attention span of a teenager. Then the answer is "No".

Should I upgrade to windows 7

Windows 7's features are almost none. It scores solely because Vista was so bad. Upgrading is not for the faint hearted, seriously if it goes right its tricky and you will encounter difficult questions. If it doesn't go right or you get one of those question wrong you'll loose all your data, and quite possibly need the restore CD that, if you were sensible and bought a decent pc came with it. Upgrading from XP is NOT possible, and either makes a mess of your drive or will destroy XP and ALL your files. Hence "No".

Windows 7 is stable and reliable (for an M$ product) - but not exiting.

I run Vista should I upgrade?

Vista is not as quick or slick as 7 and its buggy and a resource hog, you can, and it apparently works "Upgrade" I.E. put in a disk and come out with 7 with theoretically all your programs and files intact. Note the "theoretically" you want to plan for what happens if this doesn't happen. So its theoretically a good idea.

Reasons Vista(victims) users should conceder upgrading:

If you bought a cheap and shitty vista PC or netbook it might help.
you have 1 gig (or god forbid less) Ram.
Your PC has little important data on it.
Your PC is slow despite being hi spec.
You've read the "Big Fat Warnings" section below.

Do not Upgrade if:

Your PC is packed full off files and customized settings and does what you want.
Your short on disk space.
Your not at least a competent PC user. If you don't understand terms like partition is or NTFS then leave upgrading well alone.
You can't back up everything important to you first.
You've read the "Big Fat Warnings" section below.

I run XP should I upgrade?

Well either you've an old PC in which case you probably don't, or you've been canny and bought a new one without Vista on it. There is NO UPGRADE from XP you can either blast your drive completely, install in alongside or over the top. I really don't recommend the on top or the along side. Both will end up with a horrible mess unused or not working files and or duplicates all over the place.

Reasons XP users should conciser upgrading:

If you have a really fast PC that should have come with vista but you downgraded.
your PC's os is a mess anyway and a reinstall or restore disks coming out anyway.
Your PC has little important data on it (its gonna get wiped remember)
You know how to back up all your files settings and so on and have the means to do so.
You've modern hi spec hardware or software that wants vista or better.(not likely)
You've read the "Big Fat Warnings" section below.

Do not Upgrade if:

Your PC is old cheap or slow (less 2ghz, 1.5gig ram)
Your PC is packed full off files and customized settings and does what you want.
Your short on disk space.
Your not at least a competent PC user. If you don't understand terms like partition is or NTFS then leave upgrading well alone.
You don't think formating you hard drive is fun (it isn't)

Some big fat warnings

Backups

Backing up your files is a bit of a misnomer "Your Files" is taken by most utilities to be "My Documents" and little more, in reality to get a PC back the way it was you need to know where all the things that are-not-files-but-really-settings-actually in many cases these days they're as important as your files. Some things who's storage windows or its programs hides from you:

Address Books (for offline type programs Outlook Thunderbird etc)
E-Mails (for offline type programs Outlook Thunderbird etc)
Photo captions, albums, slideshows, rotations etc (Photo management progs like Picasa)
Playlists, ratings etc (iTunes and the like).
Favorites Bookmarks links etc.
"Licenses" for Digital Purchases

Almost every program has settings most of them you'll never touch, or aren't real show stoppers, skins, themes, settings aren't the end of the world. Think! If you didn't have to give it a filename god knows where it is now.

At a minimum you want to take a copy of your users data! It lives in c:\Documents and Settings\User_Name on XP or c:\users\User-Name on vista (back up other users up as well)

XP users note if you've done this before the positions have all changed for vista/7 so restoring to the right place will be a challenge.

Restore Partitions

Almost every pc these days comes with some kind of restore system - effectively a backup copy of the windows install cd copied to a chunk of your hard disk. The people who put this system on your pc rather arrogantly decided: Your were going to make a mess of your PC, that you'd lose the CD that came with it, that you'd never change the operating system of your PC, and you didn't want that chunk of hard disk anyway. Some of them have gone further deicing its cheaper not to give you a CD to loose.

Some PC's now come with an "instant boot" mode to give you linux for instant Internet as well.

Installing windows 7 will endanger this partition as it potential messes with had disk partitions and boot system - if you've still got the "Restore CD" then no worries, if you haven't and it all goes wrong you could find no restore system either.

Drivers

Vista users upgrading then you may well be OK, XP users will not. But in case you need at an absolute minimum the correct drivers to get you back on the net so you can fix the rest of your driver issues. That will depend on your Internet connection, but you must have them. Modem, LAN, USB Modem or what ever it is. Just in case windows 7 doesn't have them. The disk of drivers that may (or may not) have come with your PC will be useless. You need new windows 7 drivers. If I were you I'd burn them to CD in case. In my experience USB sticks usually work with windows out of the box but its not something I'd want to bet on.

If your PC is an off the shelf job, then locate its model number and visit the manufactures website and see whats there. Vista drivers will probably do!

Final Thoughts

Windows' is not a radial, fashionable or glamorous system. 7 particularly its designed to deal with Vista's failings not be exiting. Its only practical differences from Vista are a slight change to the bar at the bottom of the screen a sort of combination of the task bar and quick launch. For those of you who're XP users from a users point of view, its got prettier lots of pretty transparent wobbly bits. The 2 bits of windows that really sucked the huge mess of a start menu and the mass or useless silly icons in the bottom right though not fixed have been hidden, which does make things more pleasant. The file browser system (windows explorer)'s make over has been for the better, its cleaner faster and generally more usable. For old school skilled users the search functionality has been competently buggered as far as I can tell. The lack of customizable extension support and a look in text documents off switch returns huge amounts of junk.

It does run on pretty average hardware. I've seen it hop along merrily on a netbook with a gig or ram and an atom 1.6.

I've seen some one try and do that with vista and burst out laughing. When I'd finished laughing I sailed across the Pacific ocean, when I got back it still hadn't booted....

I'm happy with it, I've another big sailing trip planned, and a newish laptop. It came with vista (crashed on a daily basis), have run windows 7 beta and XP on it. Lenovo's shitty drivers caused issues with both, but that's not Microsoft's fault. Seven is defiantly the fastest and best. Remember XP is basically windows 2000, its really not making use of all than new hardware properly. Oh and I work at a college, with an .ac.uk email and M$ sold it too me ch ch cheap....