Those of us who use Windows Vista and who have few complaints beyond the usual trivial grumbles, may wonder why we should upgrade again to the soon-to-be upon us Windows 7.

Enticingly, Windows 7 is built on the Vista codebase, which means that, at its heart, is Windows Vista. This should not be a traumatic move, even though many users, especially in business, are still using XP.

Microsoft has though moved the deckchairs around and added a lot of extra features. It also runs well on Vista hardware, namely PCs that have been designed and optimised for Vista. Windows 7 is designed to boot faster, run smoother and is said to outperform Vista on the same machine.

Windows 7’s kernel is around a tenth the size of the kernels in XP and Vista. This promises an improvement in reliability and also means that the company now has a self-contained building block that makes it simpler and quicker to test and add new features, without having to worry about the rest of the operating system.

Overall, this operating system promises to do many of the things Windows Vista failed to do when it launched.