With Windows 7’s recent release you may be thinking more seriously about whether you’re going to upgrade to the new system. Microsoft’s track record with OS upgrades has been bad lately and the company is determined not to repeat the same mistakes. One area in which the company took a lot of bad press was the unavailability of device drivers for Windows Vista. Microsoft says they have that resolved now. Upgraders should expect to find an abundance of drivers available for Windows 7 which should make the process of upgrading smoother.

If you’re upgrading your system from Windows Vista, you should have a smooth ride. There’s one caveat: if you’re running Windows Vista Home Basic, there’s no upgrade path for you. You’ll need to install the full Windows 7 product. If you’re upgrading from Windows Vista Home Premium, the upgrade to Windows Vista should be relatively easy. Your computer is already very likely to be capable of running Windows 7, and unless you have some very old or very dodgy devices, you should be in luck when it comes to drivers.

If you’re upgrading to Windows 7 from an older version of Windows (like XP), there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that Windows 7 contains a virtual environment in which you can run Windows XP. This will work for you if you have an older, irreplaceable piece of hardware or software that must run on XP. When you need to operate it, simply fire up XP virtually and run like the wind. Your XP drivers will work from the XP virtual environment. That won’t be the case if you attempt to run devices using XP drivers from the Windows 7 environment, though.

You’ll also need to verify that your older hardware is in good enough shape to run Windows 7. Microsoft offers a compatibility checking tool that will give your hardware setup the once-over to see if you need to make any hardware modifications before installing Windows 7. Older devices, smaller hard disks and minimum memory requirements are most likely to trip up old hardware.

If your hardware is really old you might want to consider just purchasing a low end desktop system that comes with Windows 7 already installed. Really old hardware is unlikely to meet the requirements of Windows 7.

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