Windows 7 compatibility test now available

Windows 7 is coming. Will your PC be ready? It seems like a straightforward question. However, in the aftermath of the Vista debacle, where many systems that were certified as “Vista Ready” proved to be anything but, the process of vetting Windows-compatible hardware has taken on new complexity. You simply cannot count on Microsoft to provide an honest assessment of Windows system requirements. And as the “Vista

Windows 7 is coming. Will your PC be ready?

It seems like a straightforward question. However, in the aftermath of the Vista debacle, where many systems that were certified as “Vista Ready” proved to be anything but, the process of vetting Windows-compatible hardware has taken on new complexity. You simply cannot count on Microsoft to provide an honest assessment of Windows system requirements. And as the “Vista Ready” experience has shown us, Microsoft’s vendor partners are no better.

[ Find out more about Windows 7 -- and Randall C. Kennedy's advice to Microsoft on how to make it better -- in our special report. ]

Hence our motivation in developing the Windows 7 Compatibility Testing widget: The need for a truly independent tool that can evaluate a PC’s suitability to run the next version of Windows. By taking marketing, politics and vendor-speak out of the equation, we hope to provide you, the reader, with an honest assessment of your PC’s runtime environment, factoring-in hardware configuration, current stress levels and workload composition.

Note: As with all Windows Sentinel widgets, you’ll first need to register for your free Windows Sentinel account. Once registered, download and install the DMS Clarity Tracker Agent and allow it to collect data for a few hours (preferrably during normal usage periods). Then load the widget and find out if your PC passes or fails (and if the latter, why). You can learn more about the process by visiting the Windows Sentinel sub-site at infoworld.com.

We begin with an analysis of your system’s hardware – specifically, the type/speed of your CPU and the amount of installed memory. As a Vista-derived OS, Windows 7 will no doubt levy the same kind of performance “tax” (high overall CPU utilization spread across a massive thread pool) that hobbled its predecessor. Experience has shown that, to get acceptable performance with Vista, you need at least two CPU cores. Windows 7 will carry forward this baseline overhead while introducing new workloads (touch, web services) that Microsoft is only beginning to describe publicly. That’s why we’ve erred on the side of caution with the widget's calculations, labeling any system with less than two cores – or with multiple cores running at less than 2GHz – as incapable of supporting a post-Vista Windows platform. Likewise, given Windows Vista’s penchant for consuming large quantities of RAM, we’re setting 2GB as the minimum memory configuration for Windows 7.