Microsoft’s Windows 7 is finally here. Steve Ballmer offically unveils Windows 7 today, from New York, at 8 a.m. PDT/11:00 a.m. EDT. Live-Blogging the Windows 7 Launch are C/Net, Gizmodo and WSJ while Techmeme and Google News have more details.
The follow-up to 2006′s Windows Vista promises new features and increased performance. Microsoft lists 10 reasons to make the move to Windows 7.
Windows 7 features include Snap to quickly compare windows side by side, enhanced streaming media functionality, a new taskbar, Device Stage, HomeGroup networking, XP Mode, and Touch capabilities.
The OS is available in three editions as upgrades or as a full edition: Home Premium ($119/$199.99), Professional ($149/299.99), and Ultimate ($199/299.99). Users can purchase the full software or an upgrade version for XP or Vista machines.
Customers who bought a PC with Vista Home Premium or higher on June 26 or later are eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7. To test whether your PC and software are compatible with Windows 7, Microsoft has released an Upgrade Advisor and Compatibility Center. In a surprise move, Microsoft has started selling computers and third-party software via its online store. Windows 7 requires a 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor, 1GB RAM (32-bit) or 2GB RAM (64-bit), 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit), and DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver.
Reviews are available from Ars Technica, C/Net, Engadget, Gizmodo, PC Magazine and PC World. Not everyone is enamored. Dvorak joins the Win7 basher brigade, notes “Steve Jobs”.
In PCMag.com’s testing they found the new OS starts up significantly faster than Vista on the same machine. A number of other benchmarks including video encoding, the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, Geekbench, and PCMark Vantage also ran faster. The only area in which the new OS didn’t show at least a little improvement, according to PC Magazine, was in shutdown speed.
Over 600 new feature ideas for Windows 7 were tested and over 90 end-to-end new product concepts and scenarios tested around the world.
The Windows operating system remains the world’s most widely used, with some version of it sitting on roughly 90% of the world’s billion-odd computers. However, according to technology research firm Gartner, more than 80% of Microsoft’s corporate customers are still running XP.
Pre-sales of Windows 7 on Amazon.com was reported to be the highest-grossing pre-order in Amazon’s history. According to a recent report by Forrester Research, nearly two-thirds of the 655 surveyed IT decision-makers for North American and European enterprises and small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) said they plan to upgrade to Windows 7 at some point. Fifty-one percent said they would chose Windows 7 to be the primary OS on their PCs within 12 months.
In April, the company reported its first quarterly revenue contraction in its 23-year history as a public company. Windows accounts for between a quarter and a half of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft’s $58 billion in annual sales.
