I'm actually excited about this latest version of Windows.

Why? Well, from what I've read about Windows 7, it should run quite happily on low powered devices such as MIDs, UMPCs Netbooks or older machines. It’s even been claimed that it will “out perform” Windows XP and Vista on everyday tasks.

At home, our machines are running Windows XP, which is fine but it’s getting old, and XP will soon be unsupported by Microsoft. Unfortunately, our machines aren't really up to running Vista, they don't have enough memory or processor power to make the experience pleasant and unobtrusive. There are some really good reasons (apparently) for moving over to Vista, but the cost associated with the extra hardware and the OS are too much to justify.

Windows 7 has a lot to prove, and if it makes the same impact on Users as Vista did, then even more people are going migrate over to the Mac.

I so hope Windows 7 gives us the “Wow” that Vista didn’t.

To find out first hand, I downloaded the latest public beta from Microsoft and installed it as a Virtual Machine. If you've tried running Vista as a Virtual Machine, you'll know how bad it is. My theory is, if Windows 7 runs well as a Virtual Machine, then it should run rather well native.

So far, Windows 7 seems to perform pretty well as a virtual machine, which is also impressive given that it's a beta. I'll be honest, I've not done much with it yet - time will tell.