Microsoft Windows 7 Professional

by Microsoft

Product Features

• Windows 7 Professional (includes 32 & 64-bit versions) lets you run Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode.
• Recover data easily with automatic backups to your home or business network, connect to company networks effortlessly and more securely
• Make the things you do every day easier with improved desktop navigation;
• Start programs faster and more easily, and quickly find the documents you use most often
• Easily create a home network and connect your PCs to a printer with HomeGroup

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B002DHLVII
• Item model number: FQC-00129
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 25, 2009
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (89 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #159 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #10 in Software > Operating Systems > Microsoft Windows > Windows 7

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

With Windows 7 Professional, fewer walls stand between you and your success. You can run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode and recover data easily with automatic backups to your home or business network. You can also connect to company networks effortlessly and more securely with Domain Join. With all the exciting entertainment features of Windows Home Premium, it's a great choice for home and for business. Need to use multiple languages on your PC or help protect your data with enhanced BitLocker security? Get Windows 7 Ultimate.

More work, more play, and more of everything in between. Click to enlarge.

Manage lots of open programs, documents, and browser windows easily with thumbnail and full-screen previews of open windows. Click to enlarge.

With Snap you can arrange two windows side-by-side just by dragging them to opposite sides of your screen. Click to enlarge.

Open files you use regularly in just two clicks with Jump Lists on the improved taskbar.

Everything you need for work and home

Simplifies everyday tasks

• Improved desktop navigation features like Snap, Peek and Shake, make it easier to manage all of your open windows.
• Creating a home network has never been easier. You can even share files and printers with all the PCs with Windows 7 on the network.
• Find virtually anything on your PC – from documents to songs to email – just by typing a word or two with Windows Search.

Works the way you want

• Designed to make your PC sleep and resume quicker.
• Takes full advantage of the power and multi-tasking capabilities of the latest 64-bit PCs.

Makes new things possible

• Watch, pause, rewind and record TV with Windows Media Center.
• Includes integrated video and Dolby audio codecs.

Simplifies Everyday Tasks

Simple to use

Preview
Manage lots of open programs, documents, and browser windows easily with thumbnail and full-screen previews of open windows.

Pin
Open files and get around your PC faster with the improved taskbar. You can easily pin programs you use often to the taskbar and launch them in just one click.

Windows 7 lets you peek behind open windows to get a quick look at your desktop. Click to enlarge.

Instantly locate and open virtually any file on your PC right from the Start menu with Windows Search. Click to enlarge.

Turn your PC into a TV with Windows Media Center, and enjoy your favorite videos and music with Windows Media Player. Click to enlarge.

Jump Lists
Open files you use regularly in just two clicks with Jump Lists on the improved taskbar.

Snap
Windows 7 has simple new ways to manage open windows. For example, with Snap you can arrange two windows side-by-side just by dragging them to opposite sides of your screen.

Peek and Shake
Windows 7 lets you peek behind open windows to get a quick look at your desktop.

Windows Search
Instantly locate and open virtually any file on your PC, from documents to emails to songs, right from the Start menu, with Windows Search.

Easy to connect

Setting up wireless connections is easier with consistent, one-click connections to available networks. Click to enlarge.

Enjoy the photos, music, and videos on your home PC when you're away from home with remote media streaming. Click to enlarge.

Manage Backup and Restore and other features through Action Center. Click to enlarge.

Search, organize, and edit files across a network in the same way you would a single folder.Click to enlarge.

Wireless setup
With Windows 7, setting up wireless connections is easier with consistent, one-click connections to available networks, whether those networks are based on Wi-Fi, mobile broadband, dial-up, or corporate VPN.

HomeGroup
Connect Windows 7 PCs on a home network in just four clicks and easily get to the photos, music, and files on each one--even share printers--with HomeGroup.

Easy to browse the web

Internet Explorer 8
Visual search helps you quickly find the information you want by adding visual cues and previews to search results from top search providers including Live Search, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Amazon, and others.

Internet Explorer 8
Use Web slices to conveniently keep up with changes on frequently updated websites, like eBay auctions or traffic sites, directly from the IE8 toolbar.

Easy to communicate and share

Windows Live Photo Gallery
Windows Live Photo Gallery makes share your photos to your favorite photo site easy.

Windows Live Mail
Windows Live Mail makes managing multiple email accounts easy.

Windows Live Family Safety
Keep your child safe by managing what sites they can visit and who they can send/receive emails and im communications from.

Note: Windows Live components need to be downloaded separately.

Works The Way You Want

Faster and More Reliable

Resume from sleep
We designed Windows 7 to help PCs sleep and resume from sleep more quickly by improving the way Windows 7 manages drivers, programs, and power.

Faster and more reliable
We reduced the amount of memory your PC needs for open windows and to execute commands to help it be more responsive to commands.

Fewer clicks and less interruptions

Makes New Things Possible

Media on your terms

Windows Media Center
Turn your PC into a TV with Windows Media Center.

Windows Media Center
Watch shows for free when and where you want with Internet TV.

DirectX 11
DirectX 11 technology delivers breathtaking game graphics so real, it's unreal.

New ways to engage

Windows Touch
Windows Touch makes PCs with touch screens easier and more intuitive to use.

Media on your terms

Windows Media Player
More and more consumer electronics, from TVs to digital photo frames, can be connected to home networks. With Play To in Windows 7, you'll be able to easily send music, photos, videos from your PC to a networked device throughout your home.

You can enjoy the photos, music, and videos on your home PC when you're away from home with remote media streaming.

Work anywhere

Location Aware Printing
Windows 7 will automatically pick the right printer for you when you move from home to work networks.

Work anywhere with less effort.

• Get connected in three clicks wherever there's a wireless network connection.
• Keep documents on your PC and on network servers in sync automatically.
• Your PC will automatically use the printer you prefer for whatever network you're on.
• Simplify making presentations special settings that keep your PC from sleeping and turn off messages, notifications, and screen savers.
• Instantly locate virtually any file, email, or document on your PC just by typing a word or two.
• Get around your PC faster with the improved taskbar.
• Open programs you use regularly in one click and files you use regularly in just two.
• Manage lots of open programs, documents, and browser windows easily with thumbnail and full-screen previews of open windows.
• Manage multiple email accounts, including Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo! Mail Plus, all in one place with one simple program.
• Get to the files, photos, and music on any PC with Windows 7 in the house from any other.
• Print to any printer in the house from any PC with Windows 7 in the house.

Safeguard your hard work.

• Advanced Backup and Restore makes it easier to keep your work safely backed up to external or network drives and accessible if you need it.
• File encryption helps keep proprietary and confidential information on a PC secure if it is lost or stolen.
• Preserve your investment in programs designed for Windows XP with Windows XP Mode.
• Windows Internet Explorer 8 helps keep your PC safer from malware and you safer from fraudulent websites designed to fool you into divulging private information.
• Easily add your PC to a secured, managed, network with domain join capabilities.
• Group policy controls help administrators more easily and effectively manage the security and configuration of multiple PCs.

Choose the Windows 7 Edition That Is Best For You

Features	Windows 7 Home Premium	Windows 7 Professional	Windows 7 Ultimate
Make the things you do every day easier with improved desktop navigation.
Start programs faster and more easily, and quickly find the documents you use most often.
Make your web experience faster, easier and safer than ever with Internet Explorer 8.
Watch, pause, rewind, and record TV on your PC.
Easily create a home network and connect your PCs to a printer with HomeGroup.
Run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode.
Connect to company networks easily and more securely with Domain Join.
In addition to full-system Backup and Restore found in all editions, you can back up to a home or business network.
Help protect data on your PC and portable storage devices against loss or theft with BitLocker.
Work in the language of your choice and switch between any of 35 languages.

Product Description

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional FQC-00129 122

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

107 of 118 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Here Comes Windows 7, October 22, 2009

By 

techdad review (San Francisco Bay Area) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (Software)

Here comes Windows 7, nearly three years after Windows Vista and eight years after Windows XP. By most accounts, Windows 7 is what Vista should have been. Do we finally have a worthy successor to XP?

PROS:
- Fast startup and performance
- Stable
- Nice aesthetic and functional changes to the desktop
- Improved networking, power management & security
- 32-bit & 64-bit versions included
- Windows Media Center
- Windows XP Mode

CONS:
- User Account Control still annoying
- Upgrade can be challenging
- Expensive

There are only two Microsoft operating systems I've personally skipped since DOS 6.x-- Windows ME and Windows Vista. Windows ME was so terrible that PC World coined it the "Mistake Edition." Vista, when initially released, was considered to be bloated, relying on higher hardware requirements than XP, while being outperformed by XP on identical hardware. With Microsoft fast-tracking Windows 7, I decided to skip Vista altogether and upgrade to 7. This review briefly touches upon some of the key features and enhancements of Microsoft's latest OS.

PERFORMANCE & STABILITY
One of the welcome enhancements Microsoft made was start-up time. The shutdown time has been improved as well. Also, in my non-benchmarked experience, Windows 7 has been at least as fast as XP if not faster. The kernel changes and ability to run the 64-bit version probably has a lot to do with that. Most benchmarks from around the Internet seem to support my observations.

64-BIT
I am elated to finally upgrade to a 64-bit operating system in order to take advantage of more memory support and modern processors. I have Intel Core 2 Duo processors in both my systems with 4GB of physical RAM but XP only allowed 3.25GB for system use.

DESKTOP
At first login, you'll notice the changes to the taskbar. The taskbar is no longer just a place to store quick launch icons and view open windows. It now provides functionality in the form of Jump Lists, which allow you to select your most frequently opened files or links from the apps you have "pinned" on the taskbar. The clock and calendar are improved and the Show Desktop icon is now integrated in the far right corner. Other desktop enhancements include Aero Peek, Aero Shake, Snap, new themes and wallpapers. You also get gadget support. All of these features combine to create a much improved and enjoyable desktop experience.

LIBRARIES
Windows 7 introduces a new feature called libraries. Previously, your system had shortcuts to My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, etc. which had files residing in only those specific folders. Files can now reside anywhere on your system and be organized inside libraries. It's similar to how many music and photo applications organize files.

NETWORKING
Even as good as XP was, networking was cumbersome. Windows 7 makes connecting two or more Windows 7 systems together easy, using HomeGroup. This enables easy sharing of files and devices. One downside is that HomeGroup is only supported between Windows 7 systems. File transfer performance between computers has been vastly improved and connecting to a wireless network has never been easier on a Windows machine.

SECURITY
Security in Windows 7 is good and comes with Windows Firewall and Defender. Still, you'll probably want to invest in a more comprehensive Internet security suite, like Norton Internet Security 2010. User Account Control (UAC) has been tweaked in order to give user accounts more flexibility in controlling their own security as well as providing more detailed information so the user can make better decisions about whether to allow certain actions. Coming from XP however, it is still annoying and I choose to turn it off. Also, in Windows 7 Ultimate, you can encrypt entire hard drives as well as external portable storage devices, like USB thumb drives. Though this is a welcome integrated feature, much of the functionality can be found in a popular open-source program called TrueCrypt. If you want encryption but not multi-language support, you could just get Windows 7 Professional and use TrueCrypt.

POWER MANAGEMENT
Power management has been improved overall and you should be able to squeeze more battery life out of your laptop, even when using your DVD drive. Sleep and resume has also been improved. XP wasn't always consistent when entering or resuming from sleep mode, but Windows 7 has been perfect.

WINDOWS MEDIA CENTER
I've only briefly played around with WMC but it looks promising. It has some fun options for media, especially when you're connected to the Internet. It may even be an adequate replacement for component DVR's should you choose to use it as the centerpiece to your entertainment center. The biggest advantage for me is that Windows 7 now includes a DVD decoder. This means that I can now watch DVD's natively. WMC is available in all Windows 7 editions except Starter.

WINDOWS XP MODE
For applications that ran in XP, but won't on 7, there is now XP Mode. It isn't perfect and your system has to have virtualization support and turned on. Go to your system BIOS to check. If supported, then install Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode. Check your hardware if you intend to use XP Mode.

RECOMMENDATIONS
If you're an XP holdout, like I was, I recommend upgrading. Vista SP2 users may have less reason to upgrade but might want to just for the changes to the taskbar and the UAC improvements. For users who don't need to use their computers in a corporate environment, then Windows 7 Home Premium edition is a good choice. I'm guessing most power users will choose Professional, which adds XP Mode and Domain Join. Ultimate also adds drive encryption and multi-language support. I suggest a clean install for best results. If you're a Mac OS X user, there is probably nothing in Windows 7 compelling enough for you to consider switching.

SUMMARY
Windows 7 is the premium Microsoft OS that Windows users have been waiting for. It's fast, secure, stable, visually appealing and fun to use. Windows 7 will make your old system feel fresh and new again. New system owners with Windows 7 pre-loaded can feel confident that they're getting the best Windows OS ever produced.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A home run by Microsoft -- Finally!, November 2, 2009

By 

Roger J. Buffington (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (Software)

Microsoft clearly understood that it was "betting the bank" on Windows 7. This is evident from the fact that installation of Windows 7 Professional is trouble-free, and the OS is attractive, easy to figure out, and easy to configure. It has quickly become a cliche' that Windows 7 is what Vista should have been, but it is also true. In my installation all of my hardware peripherals (3 printers, a fax, a scanner, and numerous external hard disk drives) installed instantly and easily. Only one of my printers required me to log onto Hewlett-Packard's website, and right there was a Windows 7 64 bit driver waiting for me. This is one day after Windows 7 was released to the public -- Microsoft clearly worked closely with hardware developers to ensure that everything was ready to go. Installation of all hardware went without a hiccup. In fact, most times when you plug a device into a USB port, Win 7 automatically finds the necessary drivers and simply installs the device.

One caveat -- XP users must do a "clean install" from XP to Win 7. This essentially means that if you skipped Vista (as many did) you will have to install Windows 7 and then reinstall your programs. I did this, and it was about a two hour exercise getting everything set up the way I wanted again after installing Windows 7 64 bit.

LOOK AND FEEL.

The "look and feel" of Windows 7 is better than either Vista or Windows XP. Unlike Vista, users of XP will have no difficulty finding the screens and menus they are looking for. The new taskbar in Windows 7 is very sharp. The user can "pin" any program to the taskbar for easy access. When a program is running, the user can hover the mouse cursor over the program icon, and a mini snapshot of the actual program appears, to show what is going on with the program. Right click on an icon on the taskbar and it will show you what files have been recently used or are open. The new so-called "aero" styling of Windows 7 is very pleasant to work with. One nice little feature is a little box at the right bottom screen--hover the mouse over it and the desktop appears without having to minimize all the open programs.

Performance wise, it is not clear that Windows 7 is wildly faster than Vista or XP. Most users will probably think it is simply because computers are in the midst of an upgrade cycle, with more and more users using more DRAM and faster processors. And, of course, the issue of 64 bit is emerging.

64 BIT

Windows 7 will likely lead the charge to 64 Bit software. Windows 7 gives the option of either 32 bit or 64 bit installation, and most users are expected to opt for 64 bit. They should. This will not immediately impact most users, but it opens the door for much better performance in the times to come. 64 bit software running on a 64 Bit OS can access far more memory than 32 bit, which was limited to 4 GB of DRAM. Those of us who manipulate large digital photographs, or use other processes that involve handling large amounts of data, will notice extreme performance improvements once true 64 bit programs are available. Now that a 64 bit OS is in place, and the accompanying hardware support (fast CPUs, cheap DRAM) is available, 64 bit computing will become common; very likely within a very short time. As always, once the capability exists, we will find new uses for them. Digital photographers such as myself have been looking forward to 64 bit applications for a long time.

In the meantime, I have found that every single one of my 32 bit programs runs just fine in Windows 7 64 bit. Supposedly some legacy programs have difficulties, but none of mine did.

CONCLUSION

After running Windows 7/64 for a couple of weeks, I have found essentially nothing negative about it. It is snappier than XP, which was starting to get long in the tooth, and seems to have eliminated some of the irritants of Vista. Most importantly, I am certain that almost all users will find that their hardware works fine on Windows 7, which was not the case with Vista. Overall, Windows 7 is clearly a major upgrade from Vista and XP and is what Vista was supposed to be.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Meh. Better than Vista, but..., July 9, 2011

By 

WiltDurkey (Vancouver, BC Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (Software)

Exec summary:

Don't stay on XP, this would be a huge mistake, security-wise. W7 is an _required_ evolutionary step forward. Not a great leap, in 10 yrs, except when contrasted with Vista. Compared to XP, it has a number of frustrating issues which really lead me to question how Microsoft spends its time.

I've been working and using on Windows for 20 yrs now, as a developer and a power user. I've largely switched to Mac OS aka OSX at home (w. a Win7 Pro bootcamp on it), use Win 7 at work and sometimes use Linux (Ubuntu).

The emphasis here is largely that of a home user / home office. So why Windows Pro? Simply put, if you need to bring your laptop onto a company network for some reason, like consulting, you will find that Microsoft puts limitations on Home versions of Windows joining company network domains. Can you get it to work? Maybe, network admin is not my strong point. But easier, if you care, to just get a Pro, it'll run your games just as well. Mind you, you can always get Home and use the upgrade-from-Windows feature to bump up to Pro. At least, I assume you can.

To me, the best Windows was XP. It was a big, stable, step forward from previous consumer Windows and it could run games, unlike W2K. It was reasonably fast, didn't get in the way and Linux and Mac OS were not as polished or not even available.

But it's been 10 yrs, we have new technologies and new threats. Forgetting Vista, which I never used, what does 7 bring to the table? How does it compare to other personal computer operating systems?

Good/adequate

- General UI is adequate but not super innovative either. Aero is cute, but... so what? Full-window previews on ALT-TAB are actually distracting. Its saving grace? Gnome on Linux is so-so, I hate KDE 4.x and Ubuntu's Unity is unproven. So Linux GUIs are still lagging. The Mac's GUI is well done, but not without its own quirks either.

- Pinning programs on the task bar - like Mac OS. Jump lists and multiple windows - way better than Mac OS and infinitely better than Gnome.

- Security. The annoying do-you-want-to-allow-this prompts, aka UAC, aren't super well implemented, but they are a necessary security enhancement for Windows. Mac OS and Linux both seem to remember your elevated privileges better and don't bug you to just open admin programs. For example, I get prompted every time I run my antivirus at work. Is this really necessary - pointless prompts teach users to always click OK. Still, a welcome change.

Turning off UAC, as some reviewers irresponsibly recommend, is not terribly clever if you care about security.

- Admin vs. user mode. Windows 7 has mostly gotten programs to work correctly when run by unprivileged users, unlike XP where many required you to be an admin. Why would you want to be a low privilege user on your own machine? Security, less risk of malware sneaking itself in using your user privileges. A big plus.

- Version upgrading within Windows. Say you bought a laptop with XP Home on it. You had to jump through hoops or buy a new box to upgrade to XP Pro. This has been fixed in Windows 7. A huge thank you.

- MS Security Essentials. Nice addition as I dislike Norton & McAfee, which tend to slow machines down more than most viruses. I continue to use AVP or Avast instead, but it's nice to have the option.

- Support for Blu Ray hi-def movies. If you care about that - Apple does not support it. Linux & Blu Ray are not exactly a match made in heaven either. So Win7 wins because the others didn't show.

- Games. Games under Linux are a bad joke and have been for years. Games under Mac OS are few, mostly belated ports from Windows, difficult to find at retail and are more expensive. Again, Win7 wins by default.

- Tons of programs available. Quality is what it is but most well-written programs make things easy for the user and don't require effort to install and start using.

Frustrating

- Significant re-design of the interface, without a real need for it. For example, we lose the classic menu, we get more ribbons a la Office 2007, the configuration panel is changed. Is it better than before? Not really. Is it different enough to be annoying? Definitely.

Anyway, a big Windows drawback is it configuration by dialog box. Everything is in a dialog box, somewhere. Finding it is not fun, especially when it is buried 3 or 4 dialogs deep.

- Freezes, gray outs and "not responding" programs. Something Windows 7 never quite seems to realize is that its job, except in rare cases where the user requests a high-priority, long-duration, computation, is to... respond to the user. It is supposed to do my bidding. Period.

Windows 7 repeatedly pauses itself, or other programs and goes gray. During that time it accepts no input. And that while no urgent tasks are taking place. This is much worse in W7 than in XP. Neither Mac OS nor Linux have these types of issue. BIG FAIL.

- Encryption (Bitlocker). Available in higher-cost versions of Win7 only. Save money, use TrueCrypt instead, which has many advantages over BitLocker or Apple's FileVault.

- The DOS command shell. Yes, we have Powershell, but I fail to see what it does that BASH cannot do more easily. DOS itself is an embarrassment. Get a grip.

- Explorer. Same old, same old, except for the searches which are slow. No smart folder a la Mac OS.

- IE. Thankfully I use Firefox, but IE 9 also spends about 5-6 seconds on my machine thinking before it accepts any input. See my point about user responsiveness. What about having a NoScript equivalent for IE?

- Do we need 6 or 7 versions of Windows? Home, Pro, Ultimate. Shiny, Not Shiny. Not to mention that each has subflavors: Retail, OEM, Upgrade. Really? Greedy Microsoft.

- Expensive$$$, unless you buy it baked in with a new system which I rarely do.

- Boot time & especially boot time profiling. My Win 7 at work takes 2-3 minutes from the login to actually accepting user input. Probably due to some non-responsive login script is my guess. In XP there was a nice boot profiler and you could see which programs were taking their time. No such thing in W7, except through an entirely inadequate Event Viewer entry. You can profile W7 boot times, but you need to download the profiling parts of the .Net _developer_ framework, multiple GB, which can be trimmed down to 242 MB, if you work at it. Then you need to jump through additional hoops to actually profile. BIG FAIL.

- Event Viewer. Slow as hell, twice as complicated as the XP Event Viewer, limited if any increase in capabilities compared to XP to show for it.

- Sleep/Hibernate/PowerOff/Resume. Win 7 under Bootcamp on my MacBookPro behaves fine. It is a dog on my 2-3 yr old laptop at work. Half the time I need to shut it down by holding down the power button. And I've had that work laptop repeatedly wake up and power on in my backpack, which causes huge heat ups in the enclosed bag. Big Fail. Bigger fail yet: start a shutdown - which takes forever. Close the laptop, which puts it in hibernation. When you power it back up, it resumes where it started, which is to shutdown. Like it couldn't finish its shutdown instead of hibernating. You can't make this up!

- Some programs (Explorer, IE), now have menus turned off by default, replaced with an entirely inadequate ribbon with 5-6 icons that give you very few of the functions you need.

- Windows Update & its reboots. News to you, Microsoft, I don't want a potential reboot every time I install a patch. Apple and Linux mostly get this. You don't. Have some respect for my time.

- various. Try to shutdown a program from the taskbar and it will often ignore you. Sometimes when you get an error, you are presented with a "Windows is looking for a solution" wait dialog. Never seen any solutions come out of that 20-30 seconds wait, waste of time.

- Security. Despite getting more serious about security, Windows still gets most of the malware. Part of it is its design, part of it is just that it is more popular, so more worthwhile to write malware for. Macs and Linux can get caught out, but a virus that is seen on a few thousand machine is usually really big news, whereas Windows zombie networks can rack up 100K+ machines. Still, look up MacDefender for laughs.

Depending on your needs, skills and budget, Ubuntu Linux or Mac OS are nice alternatives.

Linux:

For someone with a technophobic grandmother for example, installing Ubuntu on a PC and setting it up for email & browsing only is quickly done. The system will be at least as stable as W7, will self-patch very well, Linux will not cost you a penny and it will run quite well on low end hardware. Your grandmother will be in the browser and the email anyway so she won't notice the difference with Windows.

For a real power-user who likes to tinker with the system, Linux wins hands down. Also good for a computer savvy person on a budget or someone with an older computer.

In between the stereotypical granny and the super savvy admin, there is a uncomfortable gap with Linux. Once you step off the beaten path, Linux often needs quite a bit of tinkering and research before you get things working. If you are always installing cutting edge stuff, you may find yourself reading quite a bit of manuals and semi-helpful forum entries. Not the place you want to be at if you just want to get on with things and not spend much time tweaking your system. On the other hand, many free stable programs are available from online repositories and require LESS... Read more ›