Microsoft has come out with many operating systems over the years starting with Windows for Work groups and with the latest Windows 7. Many improvements have been made to the last three Operating Systems – XP, Vista, and OS 7- to increase speed, liability, and user friendliness. Since the three operating systems have their differences, here’s some pros and cons about the three.

Windows XP was a great upgrade from windows 2000 that added a lot of security to the previous OS. XP is still widely in use in the home and business environment. The reason for which is that it’s a very secure, very device friendly operating system. XP is also the default operating system on net books because of the low system requirements. Windows XP has a long list of device drivers that work, unlike the newer Windows Vista or OS 7. And it has 16-Bit application support. The other major factor of windows XP is that it has very little hardware requirements. For example XP only requires a 300MHz processor and 128MB of RAM. The downside is that it only sees up to four gigabytes of RAM and has little 64-Bit support.

In the respects of Windows Vista, there are many people who say it has problems. Which, I cannot argue against. Truth is, the only real good things about Vista are the great looking User Interface and is easy to network. And you can’t complain about the 64-Bit support and large amounts of RAM you can install on a 64-Bit Vista system. The cons are that vista has a very limited list of device drivers vs. windows XP. So if you want to connect a lot of peripheral devices, you will most likely have some issues. Windows Vista has a minimum recommend requirement of two gigabytes of RAM to install and run, which can be a little expensive. There is no 16-Bit support whatsoever and has compatibility issues universally.

Now for the newly out Windows 7, commonly referred to as OS 7. Since this operating system is new, there are not a lot of user reviews on the product, not even the highly known site CNET has a lot of knowledge about it. Windows 7 is about the same as Vista when it comes to hardware requirements; the only difference is it requires less hard drive space to install. But on that note, OS 7 uses the system resources much better than Vista; if you have 4 gigs of ram OS 7 only uses 384MB of RAM to idle, versus Vistas 500MB+. Unlike Windows Vista, OS 7 has built in virtualization for running your system in XP mode. This allows you to install device drivers in XP so you can use older devices on your Windows 7 system. So now you have a 64-Bit system using small amounts of RAM, Supports many drivers, looks good, and is stable. With Windows 7 you’re getting only the best features of XP, and Vista in one.
One of the other great things about Windows 7 is its price compared to vistas high price. For the Upgrade to OS 7 home premium, the price is only $79. The clean install only costs $199. Vista to date is still $169, and only a month ago was selling for $199-$299 depending on the retailer or website. The only downside to Windows 7 that I can see is that it just came out. So we don’t know as much about it as previous operating systems.