Washington - PC retailers have spent the last few weeks gearing up in a big way for the launch of Windows 7. They are cleared out old inventory and stocked the latest PCs and notebooks in anticipation of increased demand for Windows 7-ready hardware. But you may not need new a new PC to run Windows 7. One of the aspects of Windows 7 that has been most lauded by pre-release testers, in fact, is the new operating system's respectable performance on older hardware. And in tough economic times, that's good news.
To find out for sure how your PC might fare with Windows 7, read on.
If you are currently using a computer to run Windows Vista, and you have no complaints about performance, then that same machine will run Windows 7 like a champ. Windows 7 improves upon both the performance and the resource requirements of Vista, and the result is an operating system that feels both more zippy and more stable on identical equipment.
If you buy a new computer now, whether a desktop or a notebook, it will run Windows 7 just fine.
That goes, too, for most netbooks on the market, which typically come either with Windows XP Home Edition or some version of Linux, such as Ubuntu. A typical netbook using the latest Atom processor from Intel and possessing at least 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM typically can handle even Windows 7 Ultimate, the top-of-the-line edition of Windows 7, without issue.
But if you are still running Windows XP with aging equipment, the question of hardware requirements for Windows 7 gets a little trickier.
First, let's look at Microsoft's official system requirements for Windows 7.
At a minimum, your computer will need a 1 GHz or faster processor, at least 1 GB of RAM for the 32-bit edition of Windows 7, or 2 GB for the 64-bit edition, 16 GB of available hard drive space, and a graphics card that's compatible with DirectX 9. Some newer games will require a graphics card that's compatible with DirectX 10.
In simpler terms, hardware that is fairly old - say, older than four years - but running XP well will probably still work with Windows 7. To be sure, though, you should visit Microsoft's Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor website (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows- 7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx).
From there, you can download the free Upgrade Advisor application, which will run thorough tests on your existing hardware and then tell you exactly which components may be lacking.
What the advisor won't tell you is whether all of your peripherals - printers, scanners, Webcams, and the like - will work properly with Windows 7.
The good news about Windows 7 and peripheral compatibility is that the operating system does a better job than any previous version of Windows when it comes to automatically recognizing and installing drivers for a wide range of peripherals. On newer computers, in fact, you can expect to have to do next to no driver hunting after the initial installation.
Still, it's a good idea before you install Windows 7 to make a list of your peripherals and stop by the websites of the manufacturers to see whether Windows 7 drivers are already available. If they are, download them and have them handy during the installation of Windows 7. If they are not, perform a general search of the internet to try to determine whether others have had problems with your particular equipment under Windows 7.
Be aware, too, that while Windows 7 may automatically install a driver for a particular device that you have, the Microsoft-supplied driver might not have all of the features of the driver you are used to using with Vista or XP. Some duplexing HP printers, for example, get installed properly under Windows 7 but fail to print on both sides of the paper, regardless of driver settings.
Of course, hardware compatibility is just part of the concern of anyone migrating to a new operating system. Software compatibility is key as well.
Here, Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor can help you, as well. Typically you'll find that most common Windows applications work just fine under Windows 7, with no issues whatsoever. Common exceptions are some utility software packages and antivirus utilities.
Notably, Microsoft's own OneCare antivirus tool is incompatible with Windows 7, but that's in part because Microsoft cancelled further development of the tool in favour of the new Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials), which is free and available now.
For those who have legacy applications that run fine under Windows XP, but for some reason will not under Windows 7, Microsoft has an answer in the form of the new Windows XP Mode.
Essentially, XP Mode - available for free only for the Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions of Windows 7 - creates a completely separate Windows XP operating system instance running inside of Windows 7.
Once XP Mode is up and running, you can switch to it just as you can switch to any other open application. Except here, you'll find the Windows XP Start menu, desktop, and all other familiar XP features, and all of your applications that ran under XP will also work under XP Mode.
If there's a catch with XP Mode, it's that it will only work with Intel processors that support virtualization technology. Fortunately, most made over the last few years do. There's a complete list of the processors that do and do not work with XP Mode at Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-xp-mode-virtualization-inte l,7709.html).
If you have a mission-critical PC, and you think you want Windows 7 but don't want to completely redo your existing computer to find out, consider buying a new hard drive to replace the one in your current computer. Leave your current hard drive intact, with all of your applications and files installed, and simply replace the existing drive with the new one.
Install Windows 7 on the new drive. If you like it, great - you can migrate your old data to the new drive. If you don't like it, no harm - you can just put the old drive back in your PC, and everything will be as you left it. The new drive can be used as a backup drive - and you can never have too many of those.
