Chrome OS vs Windows 7

Recently Google announced that it would be making an operating system which it called "Google Chrome OS". Now this is quite a bold move to make with Windows 7 just around the corner (releasing on October 22, 2009). Chrome OS is going to be open source and based on Google Chrome their browser. It will be targeted at net books when it is released sometime at the end of 2010. It is based on the Linux kernel but it will have a new windowing system.

They say the design will be minimalistic and it will be mainly web-based with focus shifting from the desktop to the Internet (Cloud Computing). They also said that there will be a completely different security structure making it very difficult for viruses to infect the computer. And best of all it will be completely free.

The big question is will this move hurt Microsoft? Will people be put off from buying Windows 7 and use the free Google Chrome OS instead? We need to wait until Windows 7 is released to know.

Windows 7 Beta

Recently my dad downloaded Windows 7 Beta 1 to test it out. It is not very surprising that Windows 7 was launched only 2 years after Vista since Vista has received a lot of criticism.

Windows 7 is a very good operating system. I have tested Vista briefly and Windows 7 is very similar but I like the improved taskbar very much. We have never switched over from XP because my dad thinks that Vista is not very secure. When I used Vista I never found any bugs in it but I only tested it briefly so I can not say.

We installed Windows 7 on 3 computers and we have never had any problems with any of them. It even worked perfectly on a 6 year old laptop (except the Aero theme)! It seems very secure and we have never encountered any major bugs in it.

I think most people will switch over to Windows 7, even people who recently bought Vista. The only criticism I have of Windows 7 is that Microsoft should have thought of a better name!

For a more detailed insight into Windows 7 please visit my dad's blog.