Those of us in the IT field have eagerly awaited the arrival of Windows 7. Since early testing, this operating system has delivered on all the promises that Vista failed to achieve. Many companies and consultants put off replacing older equipment in an effort to wait out the Vista fiasco.

Windows 7 is a huge step forward. For years, I have told people that Windows XP was the best operating system Microsoft has ever released. Over the last two months of testing and using the full release, I have to now revise that statement and say that Windows 7 is my new favorite.

Windows 7 is faster. Period. It is faster than XP. It boots faster and I can use programs right after logging into the system. Programs such as Office 2007 (which I did not like to use in XP) now run quickly with great response times. All of this is on the exact same hardware.

Windows 7 has become less intrusive while you work. It is fairly safe to say that the User Access Control was universally hated (for those who are unfamiliar with this, it’s what Mac makes fun of in the commercials when PC keeps asking for permission to run programs and pictured to the right). Windows 7 has it, but immediately asks if you would like to change the settings. Setting the slidebar to None makes UAC completely go away. No more problems getting your work done.

With more software vendors writing for the new operating systems (Vista and Windows 7), the number of compatibility issues have dwindled dramatically. For those that prefer their older programs, Windows 7 includes XP Mode. This will run legacy programs as they would run on an XP machine, or give the user an option to run a full XP desktop. This requires the 64-bit version of the operating system and newer hardware.

This version of the desktop operating system was specifically designed to work seamlessly with the new Server operating system Windows Server 2008 R2. By moving up to the Ultimate or Enterprise versions of Windows 7, mobile users and remote offices now have the abilities to stay in constant contact with their servers. Branch offices can also drastically cut Internet usage and increase speeds by leveraging both Windows 7 with Server 2008 R2.

If you have been following the hardware news about solid-state drives, Windows 7 is the first operating system that correctly reads and writes to these drives and avoids the performance drop-offs. This makes the operating system load in seconds and can launch multiple programs before a traditional hard drive can load the operating system!

It is with a sigh of relief (from techs) and unbridled enthusiasm that Windows 7 rolls out this month. It finally makes sense to upgrade instead of bandaiding old systems. Like so many others, you now have another glowing review of Windows 7. Enjoy!