Mrs. Mecomber's Scrapbook Talking technology, computers, and the Internet… for the average computer user

Well, this is having me look twice at Windows 7, soon to be released in October.

Nvidia product manager Chris Daniel said Windows 7 is “the first Windows operating system to treat the graphics processing unit (GPU) as a real peer to the CPU.”

Daniel, writing in a blog post Friday, said that with the introduction of Windows 7, “Microsoft is really opening up the immense parallel computing horsepower of the GPU natively right in the operating system.”

That could be good news for a range of PC users with heavy graphics requirements, including gamers, engineers, artists, and others.

One key to Windows 7′s graphics performance is a new application programming interface known as DirectX Compute. The API enables computers to take full advantage of the parallel processing power built into today’s high-end cards from Nvidia and other vendors.

I’m quite happy with Vista, now that all my printer drivers are installed correctly. Vista x64 is still incompatible with some things (older software, etc), but I have enjoyed some of the outstanding functionality. For one, I just cannot live without the Start Menu Search functionality. I use that every day, all day long! And I love the snipping tool (I use an Apple keyboard, so I have no “Ctrl+Prnt Scr” buttons. But Vista is tough on graphics. And I’m getting fussier with graphics, because I am moving into heavy-duty photo and video editing. And I’m not finding much with Vista x64 that works well. So maybe Win7 has the answer. But not for a while! I have enough computers and I’m very happy with them.