You’re Going To Need A New Computer

I am a very conservative person. I don’t encourage anyone be on the leading edge of a high-tech trend because it costs more time, money and energy to make things work; the return on investment is poor, and the value returned per dollar spent is usually even poorer. I also don’t encourage anyone to get a new computer when the old one works just fine, which makes me about the worst salesperson in the world for a computer company. So it may come as a surprise that with this posting I’m letting you know that if your computer is more than three years old, you’re going to need a new computer. You should start your budgeting now.

What’s changed? What irresistible force of nature has Brian speaking so?

Windows 7.

I’ve been running the release candidate (an unofficial version designed to get feedback by its users) for 6-12 hours a day for about 4 weeks. Every time I use it, I am increasingly impressed with its reliability and stability. Originally I split my computer to be able to run XP and Windows 7. The reality is, I think I have booted XP once since. Everything I ran on XP runs on Windows 7 – and often better. There is no need to go back to XP.

Windows 7 needs more hardware resources than XP does to its thing. PCs that are older than 3 years are going to struggle a bit with 7. Will they run it? Quite possibly, but they won’t perform well. Most computers in business today are, on the average, 4 years old.

When Vista came out, those of you buying new computers found out that the hardware companies got together with Microsoft and determined that you should not be buying new computers with XP anymore – even though that’s exactly what you wanted. The ensuing backlash from business was so great that hardware vendors had to change their tune and start offering ‘exceptions’ rather than see sales drop drastically. Even today, getting a new computer with XP is a real pain.  Expect this to happen again, but this time you won’t be forced into an operating system… you’ll want Windows 7.

7 is what Vista should have been to begin with, but history tells us that’s just what Microsoft does – release a product too early, then fix its bugs, name it something else and sell it again. Windows 3.1 begat Windows 3.11 for workgroups. Windows 95 begat Windows 98. When they crossed the power of Windows NT with the clunker known as Windows ME, we got Windows XP. Vista… begat 7.

For those of you who have invested heavily into business-specific applications that you’re told will ONLY run on XP, Vista has a virtual machine for XP. You can run real XP (not a window) inside Windows 7 at the same time. And? It works. Now, the visionary in me will read your future and tell you I see… programmers, software companies… who wrote that XP application… will tell you that you need a new version so that it will run natively in Windows 7. With the virtual machine, now that choice is up to you.