Windows 7

I received my copy of Windows 7 (Ultimate if you must know), and I have been running it through some tests. So far I'm pretty impressed. I have loaded it on a few test systems, both of them older machines. One is a Pentium 4 (single core) with 1.5 G ram. And one was a Celeron with 2 gig of ram. Both of these boxes are 3+ years old. The boxes originally had XP on them, upgraded to Vista recently in prep for this windows 7 test. I also have it on a newer dual core DELL system and have been running the BETA on it for some time. Very snappy.

Windows 7, without a doubt, runs better than Vista on both of these older boxes. Both of them feel "faster" by far than they did with Vista on them. Not QUITE as fast as XP was, but not enough to worry about. The newer systems are harder to judge, being they were built for Vista, they were already pretty fast. I'm sure 7 is faster on them also.

Ok... so, is it worth upgrading? At 219 bucks for the upgrade, I'm not convinced it's worth going to 7 Ultimate for an older system. I think the Home Premium at $119 for most people is more than sufficient anyway, and it's a lot less money. Microsoft has a chart to compare them. An even better deal is the 3 computer family pack of Home Premium for $149.

Also, if you can, and your Processor will support it, get the 64 bit version. You will be able to use far more RAM on the 64 bit systems for future expansion.

That being said, if you really are thinking about upgrading to 7, it's a great time to buy a new computer. Desktop machines are pretty cheap now, and even decent notebooks are not too expensive at this point. A Dell desktkop, without a monitor is as low as $299 and I have seen some retail notebooks at $375 (No, not net-books, real laptops). A pretty decent Acer Timeline with 8 hours of battery life is only $499.

If you bought one of the "Free upgrades to Windows 7" deals recently, run, do not walk to get your free update and install it right now. If you are using old hardware, give some serious consideration to a new box before you plunk down over 100 or 200 bucks on software to put on a computer that isn't even worth that much to start with.

Acer.. You know me

I truly love my new Aspire ONE laptop.

Another July Party

Bryan's July Party was pretty great. Bryan likes it VERY dark to fire off his fireworks, so it was late (Stupid Daylight Savings Time), but once it was going.. WOW.

July 12, 2008 - Party

Click for more ...

July 3 Annual CCPools Party

We went to our annual party.   Nobody got tossed the the pool this year...  Strange.