If you’re a Windows XP diehard, you’re probably not making any quick moves to update your operating system to Windows 7. Windows 7 hits the market on October 22, 2009. You may or may not realize that Windows XP hit the market on October 25, 2001. Eight years ago. Eight years is a long time to run an operating system. A lot of things change in eight years. If you decide to celebrate Windows XP’s birthday by retiring it, you’ll be in for some changes yourself.

You Can Still Use XP Drivers Virtually

First, there is no direct upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7. You’ll need to do a complete install, which means that you’ll need to back up all of your files and re-add them to your drive once your upgrade is done. You may also need to find and install new drivers for your hardware. That may not be the most pleasant task, but it doesn’t have to be difficult, either. You can manage all of your drivers with a third-party driver manager like Driver Detective. Driver Detective will locate all of the appropriate drivers, download them and install them. You don’t need to do anything. It will even take care of the drivers that are installed, and replace them if they get corrupted or go missing.

If you have Windows XP software that you don’t want to (or can’t) upgrade, you can still run it using Windows 7′s virtual XP environment. (As I said, some things have changed.) You can also still use the XP drivers in the virtual XP environment. Under the new license for Windows 7, you can purchase downgrade rights to Windows XP for a short period of time (about six months), after which, you won’t be able to purchase computers that come with XP loaded. You’ll also have to pay for the privilege of downgrading. Only certain premium editions of Windows 7 come with downgrade rights.

Sooner or later, (and sooner, if Microsoft has anything to say about it), Microsoft is going to drop support altogether for Windows XP. Once you start using Windows 7, you may find that it changes the way you think about XP. Windows 7 is more stable than Windows Vista and Microsoft has addressed some of the issues Vista users were most critical about. In short, Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have (and could have) been. To borrow a phrase from a very old TV commercial: “Try it! You’ll like it!”
Photo Credit: Randen Pederson