I have been doing some not-very-scientific research with regard to running Windows 7 on older desktop and notebook hardware and I have been pleasantly surprised with the results. In particular it’s running very nicely on my 3 year old, low-end Compaq PC with only 512MB of shared RAM. I was therefore pleased to see that others have been doing similar experimentation, in particular Michael Scalisi at PC World who has published a very informative article on the topic. The final sentence is worth quoting:

“However, if you have a computer that is newer and more capable than my worst-case-scenario tester, I recommend doing a little research to make sure drivers are available for your hardware. If all checks out, your computer is ready to run Windows 7”

Whether you’re a small business owner or the CIO of a large multi-national company (or somewhere in-between) I strongly recommend you grab the Windows 7 Release Candidate and start looking into whether Windows 7 will run on your existing hardware. Like me, you might be pleasantly surprised.