Windows 7 – Is it worth it for Vista users to upgrade?

The Windows 7 Release Candidate version has been recently released by Microsoft. The salient features include high performance, and little improvements here and there. [Edit: the final, RTM version has also recently been released to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. My opinions have not changed.]

But what about Vista users? In specific, those that have the more expensive versions, such as Ultimate or Home Premium?

The matter of fact is: those users who have stuck to Vista will have noticed that Vista is no slouch anymore. Post SP1, Vista is pretty high on performance parameters, at least better than XP on the same hardware. And many of the little annoyances have been fixed over time: crashes have become fewer, shares can now be accessed out subnets, and as people become used to the UI, it doesn’t look so poor after all. And finally, the much maligned UAC has proved to be a massive security barrier: an XP system set loose on my university’s wild Local Area Network becomes unusable in less than 5 minutes, but Vista’s system files (at least) last nearly indefinitely unless someone turns off UAC, or accepts the warnings it gives.

In other words, Vista is patched to the hilt – and performs. So why would you move to Windows 7?

Truth is – I wouldn’t. Windows 7 just does not offer enough new features – or any compelling reason (Windows 7 programs are almost certain to run on Vista and vice versa) – for me spend that cash on an upgrade.

For me, that only glaring new feature, the Ribbon type Taskbar, is one step back. It covers a lot of screen real estate, and the merging of multiple icons means I now need to take a few extra milliseconds to make my choice. Of course, this style can be disabled, but why shouldn’t I stick to Vista?

For me, the Vista to Windows 7 upgrade is worth a lot of outgoing cash – and not enough benefit to justify it.