New
#1
Tell me about Windows 7
After hearing all the terrible things about Vista but needing a new computer, I decided to switch to Apple computers, especially since they can also run Windows. But for the fact that so much less software is available for the Macs (particularly of the free variety), I have been quite happy with my iMac and my Macbook Pro and am less than thrilled when, for some applications, I have to revert to using my Windows machines. But the truth is, in many cases the software available on the Windows platform seems to be better, more refined, or more fully developed and/or better integrated than much of the software for the Apple computer. And sometimes the ergonomics in Windows is better as well.
What I love about my Macs is that their performance hasn't degraded over time. My iMac performs as fast today as it did a year and a half ago when I purchased it, while all of my Windows machines became so sluggish with continued use that I hated booting them (slowly) up. I also don't run virus software or a special firewall software on my Mac; those things degrade the performance of Windows machines.
So what I want to know is, has Microsoft fixed the problems with Windows slowing down over time? I don't want to spend a half a day figuring out what's booting at startup that I don't really want to boot up, and what's running in RAM that I don't need to have running. I don't want to have to buy utilities to clean up the registry. And I don't want the performance of my machine to grind to a slow stall after I've used it for a year or two. Computers don't have to be that way; they're not that way with my iMac or my Macbook Pro.
So, again, are these issues fixed in Windows 7? I'd love to be able to buy cheap computers again and to have such a huge universe of software available to me.