A year ago today I wrote an article called “Why Windows gamers will ALWAYS need XP”.  This came about because several of my friends are PC gamers and, while some of them may have been happy to use Vista for day to day internet browsing and document creation, they, rightly, insisted on a dual-boot XP system for games.

In the article I said…

Then came great news!  Windows 7, or whatever it finally ends up being called is having a new system to manage the services.  From now on, only the services you actually need will ever run.  But this obviously means there’ll be still no gaming mode for Windows.

So what does this mean and why is it going to only mean more of the same for gamers?  Let’s look at some scenarios and ask some questions.

When will Windows switch services on?  Will this happen when software is installed or when you run it after booting into Windows?  If it’s the former then will the service be switched off if you uninstall the software and nothing else needs to use it?  I would think this scenario unlikely.  What then will happen if you have a start-up program that needs one of these services.  You’ll fairly obviously shut this software down before running your game but the service will still be running.

Windows might be leaner and running fewer of the things, but this is still a long way from a dedicated gaming mode.  Even with the release of Fusion I’m still not recommending anyone only have a single operating system on their PC if they’re truly serious about gaming.  If for no other reason that the software companies that write these things, you know who you are, are notorious for sloppy coding.  Frequent software patches are common, often to fix problems caused by the last patch!

I hadn’t seen Windows 7 at this time but was looking forward to chat I gathered would be a leaner, fitter OS.  In the last year I’ve had a lot of time to play with Windows 7, I’ve had the OS since March, and I thought I’d revisit this to see how the assertions I made a year ago stand up with Windows 7 about to launch.

So what’s the truth?  Windows 7 has far fewer services running as standard than Vista and XP had.  This is excellent and if you don’t have certain hardware then the OS won’t switch on things that ran by default in previous versions of the OS.

Windows 7 is no doubt a much faster OS than Vista and is actually a very good gaming platform.  You can happily run games in it without having any problems whatsoever.

However on a day to day use basis there have been many reports of the effect third-party software has on the speed and response of this new OS.  This is especially true of all the additional software that gets installed with hardware (graphics cards, printers, iPod etc.) that you simply don’t need.

This bloatware, much of which is set to start when windows boots, can significantly slow down the OS.  This will obviously have an effect on your gaming performance.

There’s still call for a gaming mode and some utilities exist to try and create one.  Windows itself is lean enough to run your games happily, but you can never just have Windows.  You should be careful when installing software and hardware that you only install the software you actually need and that afterwards you switch off all the services you don’t need.

To find out how to do this then there are extensive and easy-to-follow how-to’s in my Windows 7 Power Users Guide.

So will gamers still always need XP?  No.  I’ve changed my mind now, but you might still need a dual boot Windows 7 system.