What a difference a few years makes. When Windows Vista debuted in late 2006, I was full of questions: Windows Vista was a big, messy Windows release, delayed time and again, and suffering from too many features and too little cohesiveness. This time around, things are clearer. Windows 7 is less ambitious than its predecessor, but also a better product. It suffers from none of the aimless feature bloat that plagued Vista upon its release, and none of the aimless uncertainty that followed Vista's five-plus years of development. That the public reaction to Windows 7 has also been universally positive--another sharp contrast with Vista--is also gratifying. Windows 7 deserves the accolades, and it's one of the strongest entries in the Windows family of products ever.

And that makes reviewing Windows 7 difficult. This is a near perfect software release, that rarest of upgrades that improves on virtually everything about its predecessor while losing nothing of serious importance. Yes, there are nits. Sure, I'd have liked to have seen a few components of the OS turn out a bit differently. No software is truly perfect. But you don't have to qualify the successes of Windows 7 as you did with Windows Vista. Windows 7 is just excellent, with no caveats attached. And Windows 7 isn't excellent within the context of its reduced development cycle and the resultant reduced expectations. It's just excellent, plain and simple. No ifs, ands, or buts.

So now that I've completely blown the premise of this review, which will be published over the time leading up to Windows 7's general availability in October, let me at least frame the conversation that will conclude, inevitably, with discussions of unparalleled greatness. Because even though I may have just provided you with a peek at the end of this epic review, there's still a lot to discover.

Here, in Part 1, I'd like to put Windows 7 in perspective. How has the world changed since XP first appeared eight long years ago? Windows 7 is being born into a sharply different environment than its most popular predecessor. But the parallels between XP and Windows 7 are many.

In Part 2, I will examine the all-important task of picking the proper Windows 7 product edition. This is again an issue because Microsoft has saddled its users with too many choices, though there are certainly fewer valid possibilities than before. I've already provided the most thorough and comprehensive Windows 7 product edition comparison available anywhere, but in this review I'll make the decision process simpler than ever, especially for those who don't want to wade through giant charts.

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