December 2, 2009

America falls in love with Windows 7, communism

Windows 7 has been a big hit with software critics (who must live a rockstar-esque lifestyle) and the sales charts - but what has the average user been saying about it? Remember, Windows Vista was treated like the plague when it was released and Windows XP was a mess when it was distributed to the public.

Seven? Well, it's heaven.

Windows 7 is scarcely more than a month old. Most of the people who will eventually use it haven't gotten around to trying it yet; those that have are still settling in. And the Win 7 experience will change rapidly as remaining bugs are squashed, missing drivers arrive, and compatibility glitches are ironed out. Even so, it's not too early to start gauging what real people think of Windows Vista's replacement.

So to riff on Ronald Reagan's famous question from his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter, Are Windows users better off today than they were a few weeks ago, back in the Vista era? We decided to ask the Technologizer community, a group of tech enthusiasts with a high propensity to acquire new operating systems quickly and push them to their limits. Starting on November 16th, we surveyed our readers (and Twitter followers) about their experiences with Windows 7.Our goal: to do a reality check on the mostly favorable initial reviews of the new OS (as well as our own survey of largely enthusiastic Windows 7 beta testers back in March).

The 550+ Windows 7 early adopters who took our survey mostly echo the positive response that the upgrade has received from professional reviewers, pundits, and users of pre-release editions. A sizable majority say they're extremely satisfied with the OS and rate it as a clear improvement on both the beloved Windows XP and the widely-panned Windows Vista. Crippling installation problems-the bane of every upgrader's existence, and always a legitimate reason to postpone switching OSes-were rare.

So everyone should go out, sell their Mac, and buy a PC with Windows 7. There, I said it.

(This is from Tech Rave)

1 comment:

  1. Hi Brandon,

    Like you said, Windows 7 is awesome ;)

    Alex
    Microsoft Windows Client Team

    ReplyDelete