Windows 7 hype seems to be ramping up fast as the launch date, October 22, approaches and Microsoft is doing every bit to create excitement. For instance, in some parts of the world people can host parties at their homes to celebrate the launch and win themselves a signature edition of Windows 7 Ultimate or even a PC. In the online world, Twitter users could follow Windows 7 to get prizes ranging from pizzas to candies.

Closer home, road shows are being organised in 16 cities (five metros and some tier-2 cities) to reach out to 1,800 channel partners with the new OS. The company has also initiated trials with consumers and corporates with its ‘release candidate’, along with giving out ‘release to manufacturing’ to manufactures.

Microsoft has also announced the Windows Upgrade Option Programme from June onwards, which means that anyone who buys a PC with Windows Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate will receive a free upgrade to Windows 7. The company has tied-up with leading PC manufacturers like Acer, Dell, HCL, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba and Wipro and a select assembled PC vendors for the programme.

Talking about the promotions around the launch, Rajiv Popli, director, windows client, consumer & online business, Microsoft India says that the company has done numerous installations of Windows 7 in the corporate space. “Companies like NIIT, Ranbaxy, Infosys, Wipro and even Bangalore and Cochin Airport have been the early adopters of the OS. Some of them have gone on record to say how it is helping them improve functionality and even reduce support cost,” he said. While Vista, Microsoft’s current OS, had a completely different look and feel from the earlier XP, Windows 7 builds on Vista without changing a lot of things. No wonder tech experts are calling Windows 7 “Vista fixed”.

One of the major advantages with Windows 7, says Microsoft, is that it uses less footprint on the CPU, which makes it faster. While Vista required at least 1GB-2GB of RAM, Windows works well with 1GB of RAM or even lower. However, Microsoft’s recommended specifications for Windows 7 are 1 GHz CPU or more, 1 GB RAM or more and at least 16 GB of available disk space.

Popli explains this with an anecdote. In one of the Indian technology companies that ran a trail of Windows 7, several old PCs with 512 MB of RAM were about to be phased out....

Read The Rest Here: Windows 7: a feature-rich OS

Posted By: 7Dreams
11 Sep 2009