Well, I’m posting from within the Beta version of Windows 7, the newest operating system from the folks up in Microsoft-land.  After waiting with the millions of others on Friday to get my hands on this thing, I ended up downloading on Sunday night.  To be perfectly honest, other than the delayed download, the worst part of the installation was finding a Virtual Machine software that I could use with Vista Home Premium x64.  My original plan was to use Parallels, since I use it on my XP laptop.  However, Parallels doesn’t work with 64-bit operating systems.  So then I tried Microsoft’s own Virtual PC.  However, Virtual PC does not work on the Home versions of Vista.  I finally ended up using a demo version of VMWare.

A quick word about the hardware:  I am running this instance of W7 in a virtual machine with one core and 2GB of RAM dedicated to the VM.  The physical box is an Intel Core 2 Quad-core 2.33 GHz with 6 GB RAM.

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PC World magazine has an excelent new article answering just about any question you could possibly have regarding Windows Vista.  This is an excellent resource for anybody wondering just how Vista stacks up to XP and OS X.

Windows Vista FAQ – Yahoo! News

With the holidays fast approaching, people are beginning to wonder if and when they should upgrade their computers and how Windows Vista should fit into those plans. Here is a synopsis of what is coming out when and a guide that should help you determine what you need:

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