According to the official Microsoft press release:

With Windows 7, Microsoft paid special attention to performance, reliability, security, compatibility and battery life. The company is on track to deliver a great experience that will allow customers to spend more time doing the things they want to do, without the operating system getting in the way.

Hmm.  Special attention to compatibility, eh?  Does that mean Windows 7 will support older hardware and software better than Windows Vista?  And what’s that point about “without the operating system getting in the way” – that sounds an awful lot like those annoying User Access Control messages that people complained about with Vista.

In any case, it sounds like Microsoft is on target to release Windows 7 in the middle of next year, which may mean as I had written earlier that some business customers may never upgrade to Windows Vista at all, and instead go directly from Windows XP to Windows 7.

More details about Windows 7 are at Microsoft’s site: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

The price of home computers has dropped significantly.  It’s now cheaper than ever to buy a home PC, and with most of the best applications on the web being free or advertisement driven, the only recurring cost is the monthly fee for an Internet connection (unless you’re using a free municipally-operated WiFi service or public hotspot).  It seems like market forces are attempting to drop it even lower, and Microsoft is looking at how to make that happen.

I’ve read lots of opinion articles and speculation before that Microsoft should consider making a "free" version of Windows that is entirely ad-driven, as a way to sway people from switching to alternate operating systems like Linux, or even beat Google to the punch assuming they ever enter the OS market.  The suggestion was that even businesses would consider switching to Vista if they knew that it was free.

Here’s one final rambling note: it seems a bit ironic how AdWare and SpyWare aren’t well tolerated practices for desktop applications, but it’s okay for sites like Facebook to have targeted ads.

Assuming the release date for Windows 7 holds, this would leave just a six month gap between the release of Windows 7 and the end of life for Windows XP for smaller build-to-order manufacturers.  It would be only three months for the larger OEMs.  Many business users may never experience Windows Vista Business, and instead move directly to Windows 7.

A lot of critics have cited the oversized hardware requirements for Vista and the lack of backwards-compatibility for hardware drivers and older software.  At the moment, it’s unclear to me how Windows 7 might solve that problem.  Is Microsoft suffering because Windows XP was too reliable?

Windows NT 3.51, 4.0 and Windows 2000 were all horribly unstable business operating systems compared to XP.  Blue screens after software or hardware installations were common.  Unexplainable missing registry keys were common.  Windows XP, on the other hand, was a robust and (relatively) stable OS for business.  It begs the question: should business software be built like other office hardware is?  Should we all develop software that will intentionally be obsolete within 5 years?  Or should we always build backwards-compatibility into infinity?

If switching to an alternate OS isn’t feasible, here are 5 easy ways to make your Windows installations less virus and spyware-prone.  (If you’re still using Windows XP like me, you can also read my post on 10 cool free tools to make Windows XP look modern.)

Keep in mind that this post is meant for the less security-minded folks amongst us – if you’re a technology expert, this advice may potentially read as me preaching to the choir.  If not, hopefully some of this advice will come in handy.

1.) If you don’t have an antivirus software, use ClamWin.

ClamWin is an open-source antivirus program.  It’s not quite as powerful as the commercial antivirus solutions out there (Symantec Antivirus or McAfee Antivirus), but the fact that it’s free makes it appealing to those of us on a tight budget.

If you can afford to drop a few bucks on a better solution, having more than one antivirus program is actually best, since occasionally some viruses, especially new variants of old viruses, can sometimes slip past detection, and others will actually target and disable specific commercial antivirus programs.

2.) Make sure Windows Automatic Updates are on.

Microsoft has detailed instructions on how to do this.  Setting Windows to “Automatically Download and Apply Updates” can be annoying if you don’t like to have your machine randomly stop and tell you it needs to reboot, but at least setting it to tell you when updates are available for download is advisable.

3.) Use Microsoft Windows Defender (or something equivalent).

Windows Defender is a free tool from Microsoft for Windows XP and Vista that works like AdAware and SpyBot Search and Destroy to prevent your machine from becoming infected with Spyware, Adware or Malware.  Windows Defender tends to be less aggressive than AdAware or SpyBot, which can sometimes intrude on legitimate Windows activity.  However, if you don’t mind their intrusiveness, AdAware and SpyBot are good tools for avoiding and removing spyware.

Windows Defender is installed by default with Windows Vista, but did not originally ship with Windows XP.  If you have Windows XP, you’ll need to download Windows Defender from Microsoft.  Both the Vista and XP versions of Windows Defender needs to pick up regular updates through Microsoft Windows Update.

4.) Switch to Firefox.

Seriously. Just do it today.  If you’re reading this in Internet Explorer, go to getfirefox.com now and download it.  It’s easy to install, you can migrate all of your bookmarks, all of your favorite websites support it, and yes Firefox has the Google Toolbar too.  If you want ultimate security and you don’t mind selectively allowing JavaScript, the NoScript add-on for Firefox will keep you much more secure.

If you don’t like Firefox, go try Google Chrome, or even Apple Safari (yes, it works on Windows).

5.) Back up your system often to more than one external drive.

This piece of advice is probably most often given, and equally as often ignored.  External hard drives are dirt cheap for the protection they provide to your personal data, regardless of whether your machine gets hit by a virus or a catastrophic act of a supreme being.  As a general rule, you should always have two forms of backups.  This can be achieved by either using least two different drives in case one fails, or to also use optical media (DVD or CD-ROM) to back up the really important stuff (like those family photos, or your MP3 collection) and store them somewhere safe in another location (away from any heat or light sources, heh).  It’s also not a bad idea to use something like Flickr or Microsoft SkyDrive as an alternative storage spot.

So ultimately I dropped Vista and went back to XP.  And as it’s been widely reported, I’m not the only one.  Some people are actually buying older laptops that have the original Microsoft XP license key stickered on the bottom just to save money from buying Vista and downgrading to XP.

But the original Windows XP look is, well, boring and old looking.

Here are ten of my favorite tricks for making XP look better:

1.) CrystalXP Windows Vista Inspirat Bricopack – this is a cool pack for Windows XP, even SP3, that installs a patched uxtheme.dll so that you can use unsigned Windows XP themes, and includes a very nice looking Windows Vista inspired theme itself, including all the icons and sounds.  Very easy to install, and also includes two of the other items on this list – Yz Shadow and UberIcon.

2.) Yz Shadow – A nifty little utility to add a dropped shadow to all the windows in XP.  This gives XP a look similar to the Mac OS.

3.) UberIcon – A pointless but fun utility to add animation to icons after you click on them.  UberIcon has different modes, including bounce and spring.

4.) VirtuaWin – A very good window manager for XP that allows you to have more than one window (similar to Spaces in Mac OS).  Switching between windows is as easy as using the Windows key and an arrow, you can move windows across different virtual desktops, and you can have some windows persist in multiple virtual desktops.

5.) VistaVG Blue Refresh – The default theme from Windows Vista Inspirat is nice, but if you want something a little fresher looking, VistaVG Blue Refresh gives you a nice gradient blue look.

6.) The Matrix Code Emulator ScreenSaver – Every geek should have this as their screensaver at one point or another, plain and simple.  This screensaver gives you that scrolling list of Japanese characters seen on the computer monitors in The Matrix movie.

7.) Google Sidebar – Similar to the sidebar in Windows Vista, the Google Sidebar (which is a part of Google Desktop) has a lot of very useful widgets, and is a useful add-on especially for newer 16:9 widescreen LCD panels.  Who needs all that horizontal space anyways, right?

8.) Taskbar Shuffle – Not so much a visual tool, but a very handy one nonetheless.  Taskbar Shuffle allows you to re-arrange taskbar items.  I tend to be a creature of habit – I always like having my email client as the first item on the taskbar.  But sometimes I have to close the email client and re-open it, and Taskbar Shuffle allows me to drag the window title back to the first position on the taskbar.

9.) Visual Task Tips – A handy visual preview of open windows.  Just highlight the item on the taskbar, and a small window will pop up showing you a preview of what that item is.  This is very handy for people that tend to open dozens of windows, but forget which one is which.

10.) TransBar – A utility to make your task bar transparent, allowing you to see your wallpaper behind it.

Got a tweaking tool that should be on the list?  Let me know!