download help: I have a Windows Vista, will I have to change software or anything when Windows Beta 7 comes out? - Help.com

Vista is the operating system of the PC. Like XP was the previous version. 7 is the next version of Windows. You do not need to install that operating system if you don’t want to. I imagine most people, who have only just changed to Vista anyway, will take a few years to change again to 7. Microsoft say that everything that works with Vista will work with 7, but apparantly there are some quite big architecture (how the software is written) changes, so only people who have used it (when the official version comes out) for a few months will be able to list the bugs.

A lot of people (just you’re average users) couldn’t understand why, when they switched from XP to Vista found that their peripheral hardware (webcams, printers, etc…) wouldn’t work anymore. Basically Microsoft had changed the way the drivers for these devices interact with the operating system. Since there was (and still is not for many devices) a way of converting the XP drivers to Vista, people were forced to buy new devices. That was after the manufacurers had redisned and redistributed them. As you can imagine, that did not go dowm well.

Further to that, Microsoft has tried to over-protect itself, and asks for User Account Control (UAC) to be turned on all the time. So whenever you want to change a system setting, you have to go through an annoying sequence of agreeing to making the changes. There is a way of turining this off, but then the system constantly whinges at you for having turned it off.

And to those who wanted an upgrade to their system; Microsoft released a set of Minimum Operating Requirements for which Vista could be run. Alas they forgot to mention that this was for Vista Basic; and when people installed Hoem Premium (the most common form of Vista), they found their graphics cards were unable to cope with the excessive graphical power needed to run the ‘Aero’ windows features of Vista.

All of this left people rather unhappy with Vista, and so it is Microsoft’s least sucessful Operating System. To make it even worse, new PC’s could only be sold with Vista installed, no option for XP was given.

It is reasonable to expect similiar things when 7 comes out, though likely not as bad. Unless you’re really intersted in the new features of 7, then I’d stick with your current OS until 7 has at least had a few months to ground in.