THE reality behind Vista 7 was never pretty. In many ways it mirrored Windows Vista, which actually seems to have brought more money in its time. Based on news headlines which were published in two weeks (filtered based on occurrences in the headlines), articles about "Vista" were pretty much none. There was this one article about 64-bit Windows (Vista and Vista 7 included) being targeted by a new rootkit. We mentioned it in the previous post and it's not really about Vista 7. When it comes to Vista 7 headlines, all we found was hype about discounts. These were not "discounts" per se but some words about implicit discounts ("Family Pack"), which help show that adoption has been poor and Microsoft tries to change this (it's just bundling that worked, i.e. forced sales). When supply and demand rules are taken into account, this is the only sane conclusion to reach. Except for Family Pack there was this puff piece about Service Pack, courtesy of Mary Jo Microsoft (she increasingly writes for Microsoft publications, always saying just positive things).
Of all the hassles that can plague a PC user (and, trust me, there are many), few are as infuriating as random lockups.
There you are, typing along, when suddenly everything just freezes. No error message, no bluescreen, just a locked-up, unresponsive system. I've been there. I feel your pain.
Q. I have Windows XP on my computer and want to install Windows 7, but I've heard that can be difficult. I also have a copy of Vista -- should I upgrade to that and then 7?
Yes. Going straight from XP to 7 will wipe out your existing applications, while a two-step upgrade will take more time but preserves those details.