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Windows 7 Is Broken, So What?

Anyone who's used computers knows that Windows 7 has problems. Not as many problems as Vista, perhaps, but if you are betting that Windows 7 will work perfectly you are making a sucker bet. Microsoft has never made a bug-free operating system in its entire history. That isn't going to change any time soon.

Apple took its jabs at PCs with their recent ad where PC says, "It's not going to have any of the problems Windows (Vista, XP, Me, 98, 95, 2) had." Of course, no company has ever written a bug-free piece of software. All software is broken to some extent. It doesn't matter whether it's Windows 7, Mac OS X, the software that runs the InformationWeek web site, or the firmware in your Cisco router. The bugs are mixed in along with the features. Whether you're an IT professional or just a plain old end user, your job is to decide when the benefits of new features and performance outweigh the risks and hassles of bugs and incompatibilities.

Fortunately, you don't have to make that judgment alone. Let's go back to 2007, just after Vista was released. There was a cascade of sad news about its foibles. Both before and after Vista's release, there was significant skepticism about whether it was a worthy successor to XP.

It's been mighty quiet these past few weeks since Windows 7 became generally available to the public. Where are all the horror stories about users upgrading to the new OS and finding their applications break? What about all the people who can't figure out how the new user interface works? If that was happening in large volumes, you can bet every technology reporter on the planet would be all over it. Certainly none of them were shy about Vista's shortcomings, with good reason.

Windows 7 was also helped by its modest goals; when Microsoft changes a lot of things in Windows they tend to mess up a lot of things too. Looking back in history, it's the big jumps that cause the most problems. Windows 3.0, 95, and NT were a more traumatic experience than their 3.1, 98, and 2000 successors.

The signs already look good with Windows 7, which is why I think it's not necessary to wait for Service Pack 1 before trying it out and migrating from XP (or Vista). It's not about whether Windows 7 is perfect, because it isn't. But I'm here to tell you that it's a lot nicer than XP or Vista.

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