Get Windows 7 now or wait? : Collective Imagination

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Greg Laden is a blogger, writer and independent scholar who occassionally teaches. He has a PhD from Harvard in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology, as well as a Masters Degree in the same subjects. He is a biological anthropologist, but for many years before going to graduate school to study human evolution, he did archaeology in North America. He thinks of himself as a biologist who focuses on humans (past and present) and who uses archaeology as one of the tools of the trade. Greg blogs regularly on ScienceBlogs at http://www.scienceblogs.com/gregladen/.

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Dr. Joseph J. Salvo attended Phillips Andover Academy, received his A.B. degree from Harvard University and his Master and Ph.D. degrees in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University. Dr. Salvo joined the GE Global Research Center in 1988. His early work focused on the development of genetically modified bacteria and fungus, for the production of novel high performance polymers. In the mid 1990's he turned his group's efforts towards developing large-scale internet-based sensing arrays to manage and oversee business systems. Most recently, he and his team have developed a number of complex decision engines that deliver customer value through system transparency and knowledge-based computational algorithms. Commercial business implementations of his work are currently active in Europe, and Asia as well as North and South America.

Dr. Peter Tu received his undergraduate degree in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and his doctorate from Oxford University England. In 1997, he joined the Visualization and Computer Vision Group at the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, NY. He has developed algorithms for the FBI Automatic Fingerprint Identification System. He is the principle investigator for the ReFace program, which has the goal of automatically computing the appearance of a person’s face from skeletal remains. Dr. Tu has also developed a number of algorithms for the precise measurement of specular and high curvature objects. His current focus is the development of intelligent video algorithms for surveillance applications.

Please visit From Edison's Desk, which is Peter's home blog at GE Global Research.

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Get Windows 7 now or wait?

Posted on: October 31, 2009 4:00 PM, by Greg Laden

"From the calls we're getting, as well as our own experience in the past with all Microsoft's operating systems, we're recommending that people stick with their time-tested OS and wait for the dust to settle," said Josh Kaplan, president of Rescuecom.

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Comments

For the reasons of both pricing and the initial soundness of their offering I think that it might be best to wait.

Some companies will discount their product slightly to attract customers who are a little skittish about buying an unproven design. MS doesn't do that. It seems to set a price and from that day forward the price never varies. Months ago I saw a retail package for XP, lacking SP1&2, and it was the same price it was, what?, ten years ago. Good news is that when the service packs patching the holes in Win7 come out you won't have to pay more.

Which gets to the second point; history for MS is pretty abysmal for first releases. If your present OS is working for you waiting for the patched version of the new OS can save you a lot of heartache. Waiting six months or a year means that tech support, user forums and the resident office geek will all have a better idea of what they are doing and what lies at the heart of this potentially glitchy MS product. I have found that waiting for the patched, SP1, version is good if you can hold out that long.

Both XP and Win 98 were far better products once they tucked SP1 into them. Sad that MS hadn't figured out how to get the patches to known issues into the initial release. Maybe this time around will be different ... right ... like that might happen.

Posted by: Art | October 31, 2009 5:06 PM

Hm. Although history is usually a guide, we are talking about upgrading from Vista.

Posted by: Bob O'H | October 31, 2009 5:22 PM

Wait? Windows 7 has been available, first as a public beta and then as a release candidate to anyone with a spare computer and a sense of adventure, since February. I have it on all of my newer PCs and even as a beta it ran better than Vista ever did. My biggest question is whether to buy it outright now or hold out until there is some sort of easy upgrade program for beta testers where you just purchase a registration number without having to install it again.

Posted by: Robert Castillo | October 31, 2009 6:37 PM

Robert: Or, you can wait until microsoft has you arrested for having illegal copies of its software which your beta copies surely are by now.

Posted by: Thomas | November 1, 2009 2:00 AM

Actually, the Windows 7 Beta has a built-in expire date, and after that date Windows 7 Beta will magically stop working. (IIRC, it will shut down every 2 hours, whether you want to or not.)

I believe the last public beta has until January 2010, but could be wrong about that. So Robert needs to decide soon.

No, there is no easy upgrade for beta testers. You need to purchase the retail copy of the OS, and re-install your system. I think the install doesn't recognize the beta as an upgrade path, so you'll have to blow away the system and re-install.

Posted by: James | November 2, 2009 7:26 AM

I have a very simple solution regarding when I should change my OS. I change it whenever I get a new computer.

Posted by: killinchy | November 2, 2009 1:23 PM

I installed Windows 7 last night. I had purchased the update since my machine was running Vista. I got a message that because I had Vista BUSINESS on my machine (it was on it when I bought it, it wasn't as if I'd chosen that) I couldn't do a simple update. I was forced to choose some type of custom install instead of basic. Windows 7 wiped out my text files that had shortcuts on the desktop, IE favorites, etc. Actually, all that stuff is supposedly saved on my hard drive in an "old" folder but I wasn't able to find it easily and didn't put too much time into it.

I don't have any important files on my home computer so it was only an inconvenience.

After installing the new op'g system and opening IE to surf for a while, my screen went black a few times, then had brief flashes of various colors, then went back to operating okay. This happened several times, but stopped after about 30 minutes. I had to re-download AVG, the free antivirus I use. I will download Mozilla Firefox tonight.

Posted by: Texas Reader | November 3, 2009 10:18 AM

Texas Reader, your experience seems about the same as any version of Windows. :-(

I figure once Windows 7 stops being "The New Thing", people will settle down and realize it's just another version of Windows with all the problems inherent in it.

Posted by: JH | November 3, 2009 2:07 PM

Vista, you mean the new Windows ME.

In-place have allays sucked / problematic, save your self a lot of headaches, spend the $90 and buy a 1TB USB drive save your old data, copy the whole dam thing, disk is cheap, then disconnect the USB drive, perform a full format on your old machine and install a fresh copy of 7. btw 7 is ok, I had it for six months or so but I did keep my XP machines too. If it ain't broken why should I upgrade?

Posted by: mrehiopian | November 7, 2009 11:10 AM

The thing is, Windows 7 could be "better" than XP or Vista (hard to not be better than Vista) in that many/some/whatever of the problems of those operations systems are attenuated or improved.But, to be a valid operating system that isn't a danger or a joke, it Windows 7 would have to have NONE of those absurd problems.

Posted by: Greg Laden | November 9, 2009 7:49 AM