Windows 7 is almost here and it is in the final stages of beta testing. This can't last much more than a few months, so we are probably looking at an autumn release. Autumn and Christmas are traditionally peak times for computer sales and Microsoft would gain the most benefit from launching Windows 7 in the second half of the year.
Some people have said that Windows 7 has been rushed out because Vista was such a disaster. It has hardly been rushed and by the time is it released Vista will be three years old! Yes, it was released to businesses and OEMs in autumn 2006 and to consumers a couple of months later in January 2007. That's not rushing things and it seems pretty normal. Compare it to Windows 95, 98, ME release dates or Windows 2000 and XP. It only seems rushed because there was such a long break between XP and Vista. And Vista is hardly a disaster. It's actually very good now that PCs are bigger and faster and there have been service packs to fix bugs and enhance features.
Windows 7 is much better than Vista though and you can try it for yourself - for free. Anyone with a fast broadband connection, a DVD-writer and a couple of hours to spare can get Windows 7 up and running on their PC. You'll find the download link here.
If you don't want to wipe your hard disk drive and replace the contents with Windows 7, go and get either VirtualBox or Virtual PC. These are excellent tools and you can run Windows 7 in a window on the desktop using XP or Vista.
Actually, now that we mention VirtualBox and Virtual PC, it's interesting that Microft is supplying Windows XP as a virtual machine to run in Windows 7. This means that you can run all your XP applications in Windows 7. Most will work natively, of course, but problem programs can be run in the XP virtual machine.
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