Windows 7 became available to UK consumers for pre-order today - Interest has been encouraging however in a recent ScriptLogic survey over 60% of the businesses surveyed said that they had no immediate plans to move from their existing OS (see here)-  Microsoft however are confident that Windows 7 will not only prove a huge success for them but for the IT market in general and could spark a increase in IT investment within the different sectors. 

In a statement from Microsoft they said: "You can pre-order Windows 7 Home Premium Edition for £49.99 or Windows 7 Professional Edition for £99.99. The offer is available through participating retailers. Each retailer will tell you how to get your copy when Windows 7 is released." Microsoft also said that the discounts are a "thank you to all the people that have provided terabytes and terabytes of feedback data to help us develop the software."

I have to say that there does seem to be a big interest in Windows 7 -  like a lot of people I was no big fan of Vista - it was just too big and had too much that simply was never used, but having downloaded the beta release of Windows 7 the signs are very encouraging - I like it and importantly it is memory light and very undemanding unlike it's predecessor. In my opinion Windows 7 represents an important milestone for Microsoft, I know and have spoken to many people who were simply dismayed to find that Vista was not compatible with Windows XP. Windows 7 has addressed this limitation with an XP compatibility mode, this allows XP applications to run in a virtual machine - this is a huge selling point and will enable companies and organisations to carry on running older essential programs .

Watch this space for further updates.....