An atmosphere of hope and encouragement has been carefully cultivated around Windows 7

An atmosphere of hope and encouragement has been carefully cultivated around Windows 7

The long-stagnant PC world finally has something to cheer about: Windows 7 is now only a few weeks away from its public launch, but the actual date is becoming increasingly irrelevant as companies publicly parade their plans to ride the bandwagon. Microsoft itself has offered public previews and betas, keeping no secrets and surprises for the final launch. Even the final version is being widely circulated, and everyone knows the only reason we’re waiting is so that the industry can get its hardware and software in order—ensuring that the ghost of Vista past doesn’t rear its incompatibility-ridden head.

Everyone’s rejoicing: PC makers can sell new machines, software vendors can sell upgrades, component manufacturers can ride the waves of new features that are enabled, and customers are finally interested in buying them all. For too long now, there haven’t been any new or exciting reasons to upgrade—stale hardware repackaged with new names, and software updates that only add incremental new features. But it seems all the tech companies have merely been saving up for the next few months. Intel’s got new CPUs with Windows 7 optimizations, AMD’s new graphics chips use DirectX 11, Nvidia’s excited about the new desktop acceleration features, Lenovo is showing off touch-enabled laptops, almost all netbook makers have new models waiting in the wings, and every PC brand will have at least a couple of new or refreshed models out.

So have they all just been waiting for a free ride on Microsoft’s marketing campaign? It’s more likely they’ve realized what an uphill battle it is to sell hardware and software in today’s world. Not only have tough times made it hard to justify upgrade spends, but know that they haven’t been able to give the majority of users any new killer apps that can’t run on their current PCs. Windows 7 changes that, and the general atmosphere of hope and encouragement that has been carefully cultivated around it is convincing people that now is a good time to jump into the next generation. Vista has been the OS that people only bought with new computers because it was there, but never chose voluntarily. 7 is now trying to be the OS that people will want to jump to because there are genuinely new, exciting and valuable things there.

So after years of (somewhat justified, somewhat misplaced) derision and perceived failure, Vista might actually have one last important function to perform: it can die a spectacular, public death as a metaphor for all that’s currently wrong with the world, allowing Windows 7 to signal rebirth and renewal. 7 is waiting for everyone else to be ready so that users will finally get that complete clean break from the past. And the entire industry is pushing this idea—with even bitter rivals spouting the same lines—to ensure that this idea gets rooted in the public consciousness, quite simply, because they need it to be true.