Microsoft's latest operating system made its debut last week and so far, it looks to be the company's best OS yet. By the time you read this column, you've either 1, already bought and installed it, 2, you bought it and it's still sitting there in the box or on the download CD or 3, you don't have it yet. This column is for those of you that fall into the latter two.
"Early adopters" are those of us who have to be the first kids on the block with the newest toys. I'm guilty of being an early adopter. Oh sure I could say that my job as a cutting-edge reviewer of computer products compels me to be one but the simple fact is that I love having the newest plaything whether I truly need it or not. I'm lucky that it just happens to be part of my job. But being one also comes with two prices. The first literally is the price. You're probably going to pay close to the manufacturer's suggested retail price since discounts and other buying incentives typically don't emerge until the new gleam has worn off a bit. But the other price you might be paying can be much more devastating than the loss of a few extra purchasing dollars.
When a new computer products is released, especially one as complex as an operating system, it's going to have bugs that need fixing. It is the nature of software to always have problems and the only thing that will eventually address and fix many of them is time. Software developers such as Microsoft and Apple strive to make their final operating system releases as solid and as reliable as humanly possible and therein lies the rub. We're all human and it is our nature to be imperfect. Computer scientists will tell you that technically there is no such thing as a perfect computer program. But if we waited for perfection, nothing would ever get released. So they do their best and release a golden master knowing full well that there will be numerous updates and patches throughout the lifespan of that operating system.
All the companies that make software and hardware for that OS try to make sure their products are fully compatible. But unforeseen conflicts can arise between theirs and other manufacturer's products. There are just too many combinations to consider. Add into the mix that all hardware vendors may not have fully compatible drivers and other support software ready in time for the OS release date. So where does that leave you when it comes to making that important new OS installation decision?
The answer is to let things mellow for a while. Don't be the first to rush out and install something brand new, especially something as complex as a new OS. As the first few weeks pass by, you're going to hear about the conflicts, the horror stories about lost data and more importantly, how it occurred. That's the legacy of early adopters. Their disasters carve out a safer path for the rest of us. They will be the ones for example, that alert you to a specific video card's driver that doesn't work correctly with the new OS, or that your printer won't collate your documents properly and that the printer manufacturer is working a fix for that problem.
So how long should you wait? With something as major as a new OS, I'd say give it at least a month. After all, there's nothing so new in Windows 7 that you just can't live without for a few short weeks.
However if you must be a number 1, be sure you make a full backup of your computer's hard drive or at the very least make a backup of all your data. So if the upgrade goes bad, like it did with my son in college who didn't ask his dad for advice about whether he should wait or purchase the upgrade on the day Windows 7 came out, you'll be able to go back and recover. I guess the apple never falls far from the tree.
(Craig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. He also hosts the No. 1 daily national computer radio talk show, Computer America, heard on the Business TalkRadio Network and the Lifestyle TalkRadio Network -- Monday through Friday, 10 p.m.-midnight ET. For more information, visit his web site at www.computeramerica.com.)
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