Software giant Microsoft today officially launched Windows 7, the hotly anticipated
follow-up to Windows Vista that's seen by many observers as a critical opportunity for
reinvigorated sales across the industry.
While Vista sold hundreds of millions of copies in the months and years after its
January 2007 debut, it still
failed to find the same kind of traction in IT shops enjoyed by Windows XP. As of
March, XP still had a home on more than three-quarters of business PCs, according to
findings from Forrester Research.
Windows 7 now stands as Microsoft's chance to correct its acknowledged past
missteps. Vista, while an aesthetic improvement over XP, quickly earned a reputation
for being sluggish, resource-intensive and initially incompatible with a large array of
existing software and hardware, among other criticisms.
Microsoft's newest OS, however, is designed to be lighter and faster. And with a high
degree of compatibility with Vista software and hardware, it's meant to avoid the
problems of application and driver compatibility that plagued early Vista users.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Windows 7 began winning fans among industry
watchers early in its development cycle. Read the rest at InternetNews.com.
