Finally got my hands on a copy of Windows 7 thanks to Daniel and his new netbook. I'd been meaning to download it myself since July, but never really got around to doing it for one reason or another. Now that someone was kind enough to give me a copy of the ISO, though, I've been spending the last two days playing with it, and I like what I see.

When I mentioned Windows 7 at care group, however, what emerged was the almost-unanimous sentiment of "yeah Vista sucks, Windows 7 is what Vista should've been" sentiment. As a happy (ex-)Vista user myself, I think this sentiment is actually somewhat dangerous.

I was a relative newcomer to Vista myself, and only started using it early this year, but that was more because it was difficult to get my hands on a copy of Vista here in Australia than anything else. In the nine months I've used it, Vista had been kind to me. People complain about Vista being slow and bloated, but then again people have short memories: the same criticisms of XP were commonplace back in 2001, where mainstream PCs only had 128-256MB RAM. People complained that Aero Glass was nothing but useless eyecandy and visual clutter. Guess what; the same things were said about XP's Luna visual style, with many back them reverting back to the classic Windows theme. People point to XP's longevity as proof of its superiority over Vista, which actually isn't true. Ever since Windows 95, new versions are typically released every three years or so, and the sole reason for the anomaly of XP's extraordinarily long lifespan was that development of Vista got stalled thanks to over-ambitiousness on Microsoft's part.

I remember my early days with XP on my old Asus machine. Even after a clean install, and nothing but an antivirus and firewall installed, XP gobbled up so much RAM that I had only 30-40MB out of 256 left free. While steadfastedly declaring their support for XP over Vista, a lot of people seem to have forgotten XP cut a lot of the same flak during its early stages that people are pinning on Vista now. But people love XP and despise Vista. The only logical explanations I can think of for this is that XP stayed around long enough for hardware specs to catch up and finally become powerful enough to support it, and once people became familiar with it they fear the new unknown.

How many people suffering from Vistaphobia have actually tried it for themselves before buying all the negative hearsay? And for those who have, how many of you were actually running Vista on a machine with enough specs to support it, and knew what you were doing? Hardware specs is a thorny issue, I know. People get annoyed when they find out they need to buy a new computer to be able to use the latest and greatest software. But that's how things work, unfortunately. Things will continue to progress, as they always have. That we're all no longer stuck on 4MB RAM 486 machines running DOS 6 is evidence of that.

If you're still stuck with a machine that's ancient but otherwise fulfils your needs perfectly, then stick to XP. On the other hand, if you have a modern computer, there's absolutely no reason to be afraid of Vista and Windows 7 (well, maybe except for the price tag if you're squeezed for cash). Keep an open mind and never be afraid to try anything new; life's more interesting that way.