The long-suffering users of Vista, possibly the worst operating system ever foisted on the public, are soon to gain some welcome relief by the upcoming release of Windows 7.

Having used the Beta (testing) version for a week now I’m happy to report it’s a considerable improvement on Vista – though that is not difficult.

Although it is essentially Vista revamped, it is much quicker, has some nice touches, and above all actually seems to work. I still find it a little difficult to navigate around Windows 7 , but it’s a bit more intuitive than Vista and I didn’t find myself constantly switching back to XP out of frustration.

If the final version is like the Beta, it will be a no-brainer for current Vista users to upgrade – those using XP may have more of a dilemma – there still is no ‘must have’ feature in Windows 7 that would entice hardened XP
users to change – they will probably be gradually forced over as they buy new computers and XP drivers are no longer available.

But in the current credit climate, I find it hard to imagine that companies who resisted the change to Vista will be queueing up to swap to Windows 7 in a hurry.

There is no official release date for Windows 7 yet, but it will probably be in time for Christmas.