"Windows Vista and Windows 7 "

The new operating system from Microsoft is Windows 7. Reviews suggest that this is a nice product and most people like it. It can be thought of as Vista with all the bugs fixed and many annoyances removed. If you buy a new computer with Windows 7 you should be pleased.

However, there is not any easy way to upgrade from Windows XP. What Microsoft expect you to do if you have an XP computer is wipe your hard disk clean; install windows 7; and then re-install all your old program again; and then restore all your old data from backup CDs etc. A great deal of hard work and no guarantee of success. Although windows 7 is prettier and it does have some cute gimmicks, there are no great advantages over XP to make upgrading essential. Our advice is that if you have XP, stay with it.

It is a different story if you are using Windows Vista. In this case you can simpy install Windows 7 as an upgrade and retain all your existing programs. And since Windows 7 is rated as being much nicer than Vista, it is a good idea to upgrade.

ABC6 and Vista or Windows 7.

ABC6 is designed to work under XP, Vista and Windows 7.

ABC5 (DOS) and Vista or Windows 7.

The 64bit version of Vista or 7 will NOT run DOS programs like ABC5 and NEVER will.

The 32bit version of Vista "should" run ABC5, but not in full-screen mode. This is due to a problem with some Vista screen drivers. Microsoft's website suggests a workaround by installing Windows XP drivers for your video adapter. Many ABC5 users have encountered this problem and most have given up trying to work around it.

Vista, Windows 7 (and all future versions of Windows) do not like DOS programs. You can run 3rd party DOS emulation programs if you really need to continue with old DOS software like ABC5. But as computers have got faster and bigger, DOS programs are being left further and further behind because they cannot use more than a tiny fraction of the memory and power of the system. It really is time to upgrade to proper Windows software like ABC6 if you possibly can.

Networks -- if your new Vista workstation cannot "see" mapped drives on your network, try turning off the User Account Control.

Help FilesVista did not include support for the widely used "old" Help Files (.hlp). Microsoft wants everyone to use the new (much bigger and slower) HTML Help System. You can download a program called WinHlp32.exe from the Microsoft Download Center, and install it on your computer. Then Vista can use any Help files.