Is your PC ready for the Vista -Windows 7 changeover?
As the online community mourns the official death of XP, one site is already preparing for Vista making way to Windows 7.
The Infoworld website is offering a free tool which claims to assess whether or not your PC is capable of running Windows 7.
It runs via the Windows Sentinel scheme. That’s an ongoing joint project between the website and the ‘exo performance network’ to allow users to monitor the performance of their computers and highlight potential problems.
The results of individual users are then aggregated to produce research on how well Windows is working and what problems are common. (Of course, there’s an inherent problem in that the ‘ordinary’ user who’s using an off-the-shelf machine is much less likely to take part in such projects as more specialised users who’ve customised their PCs.)
To use the new Windows 7 ‘widget’, you’ll need to register for the Sentinel project, install its software and let it run for several hours to get a decent overall picture of your computer.
You can then run the ‘widget’ to analyse your computer’s supposed suitability for Windows 7. It’s based on the assumption that Windows 7 will require:
- a dual-core processor;
- a minimum speed of 2GHz; and
- at least 2GB of RAM.
The tool also makes sure your computer is currently running Vista without becoming overly burdened. And it checks whether your PC’s resources are spread across a variety of tasks, or are being clogged up by particular applications.
It all sounds great, but a hilariously wide-ranging disclaimer makes it clear the results are no guarantee at all of whether your machine will actually work with Windows 7. They say this is because it’s merely a “fun” tool rather than a serious and detailed evaluation, but the real problem is that even Microsoft’s inner circle doesn’t know exactly what Windows 7 will require. This ‘widget’ pretty much works on the basis that Windows 7 will need all the resources of a Vista-capable machine plus a bit more for luck.
It’s hard to see a genuinely useful application for this tool (for the user at least – it’s certainly a neat way for the project bosses to add more machines to their research pool). At best you’ll find out that you’ll probably need a new machine two years from now if you want to ditch Vista. And even if you’re about to buy a new machine anyway and want to avoid it being obsolete in 2010, it’s not like anyone’s going to let you run this tool on a new computer before you’ve paid for it.
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July 4th, 2008
It’s a mistake on Microsoft’s part to be even talking about 7. They haven’t had much luck in getting OSes out on time. Now 7 has a big burden of needing to be a savior, an impossible thing.
July 6th, 2008
If open-source programmers wrote a “fun” tool, they would no doubt be characterised as geeks, and as not being sufficiently commercially-minded. I personally think this sounds like a great utility, though – certainly for those running Vista, for whom having some fun would be a nice change.
As for the fact that “Microsoft’s inner circle doesn’t know exactly what Windows 7 will require”, you have to give them credit for being consistent: they don’t seem to know anything these days, exactly or otherwise.