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Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking about Windows 7, how it looks, how it feels and also if it’s any good from an end users point of view but which version should you go for? Well hopefully after reading this you’ll have a better idea.

The different versions are as follows:

This info is taken directly from the Microsoft site but I feel it’s not very direct as to how the versions vary. There’s no mention of Microsoft’s ‘ghetto’ copy of Windows 7 called ‘Starter’ which appears to be quite a basic version of 7 which will be pre loaded onto netbooks and possibly even some more powerful smartphones in the future. I have discussed some of the more funky features in previous articles so I’m just going to point out a few things from the above info.

One thing that leaps out straight away is ‘Watch, pause, rewind, and record TV on your PC.’ Although it is possible to do this without any additional software if you have a PC without a PVR (personal video recorder, also known as DVR digital video recorder) you’ll need to get one as TV will not be automatically received by your PC.

‘Run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode’ this feature is going to be more for people who have old programs they’ve been using for years. It will allow you to still run these programs in a compatible environment. So say you have an MP3 player whose software will only work in Windows XP but obviously you still want to use the device, pop your CD in as usual, right click and use the compatibility option for Windows XP, simple.

All in all I’d stick to these simple rules; if you’re a home user go for Windows 7 Home Premium, if you’re a business user go for Windows 7 Professional as you can connect to domains with this version and finally Windows 7 Ultimate if your prepared to spend an extra $20 to be able to encrypt your whole hard drive with Bitlocker – just be advised that if you choose to do this data recovery on that particular drive will be almost impossible. Having worked as a techie for years the amount of people who assumed the differences in Windows XP home edition and Windows XP Professional edition were huge! Having the word ‘Professional’ after the title somehow gave people the impression they were getting much more for their money. It’s bizarre how this single word made people part with an extra £50 without them even knowing the difference in versions, the amount of times I’ve asked why they were buying professional for home use and the usual response was ‘it’s just better’ when in all honesty it’s just networking options and the ability to attach to domains, well in a nutshell.

The above recommended prices are in dollars also so I thought I’d give you a heads up on how much the different versions will cost you here in the UK, all prices include VAT @ 15%. The cheapest I found Windows 7 Home Premium on the web was around £60; £90 will get you a copy of Windows 7 Professional with Windows 7 Ultimate coming in at around £160. Bizarre pricing structure, I’m unsure why ultimate is almost double premium for what in essence encryption software which you can pick up for around £30.

So now you’ve had a little taste of Windows 7 I’m going to continue to explore the features with you, kind of hold your hand in a virtual way.

HomeGroup

“…HomeGroup takes the headache out of sharing files and printers on a home network. Connect two or more PCs running Windows 7, and HomeGroup makes it easy to automatically start sharing your music, pictures, video, and document libraries with others in your home. The new “Share with” menu, meanwhile, provides a speedy way to share individual files. Concerned about privacy? So are we. That’s why HomeGroup is password-protected and puts you in total control. You decide what gets shared—and what stays private. You can also make your files “read only,” so other people can look at (but not touch) your stuff. You can join a HomeGroup in any edition of Windows 7, but you can only create one in Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate…” Once again the ‘ghetto’ copy (Microsoft call it starter) seems to exclude quite a large feature, XP Home and Pro both allowed workgroups to be created but only pro allowed connection to a domain and I’m failing to see why this couldn’t happen again across all versions of Windows 7. Not a bad feature though, you absolutely MUST have IPV6 enabled to make a HomeGroup but sure it’s an improved way to share files. Nothing overly groundbreaking except it works much faster.

Jump Lists

“…Jump lists—new in Windows 7—takes you right to the documents, pictures, songs, or websites you turn to each day. To open a Jump List, just right-click a program icon on the Windows 7 taskbar. (You’ll also find them on the Start menu.) What you see in a Jump List depends entirely on the program. The Jump List for Internet Explorer 8 shows frequently-viewed websites. Windows Media Player 12 lists commonly-played tunes. Your Jump List missing a favourite? You can “pin” whatever files you like there. Jump Lists don’t just show shortcuts to files. Sometimes they also provide quick access to commands for things like composing new e-mail messages or playing music…” Simple idea this but very effective, it’s like having everything you use regular in one place! Kind of like browsing history for you whole computer followed by a quick launch instead of just information.

Windows Live Essentials

“…What is Windows Live Essentials? Simply put, it’s free software that makes a PC running Windows 7 do more great things. Things like e-mail, instant messaging, photo editing, and blogging. Windows Live Essentials is available from the Windows Live website…” I bet a lot of us are using some of this software already it’s just a convenient way to get all of them in one place.

The free download includes: Messenger, Chat instantly with friends and family on your PC or mobile phone. Photo Gallery, Find, fix, and share your photos. Mail, manage multiple e-mail accounts (like Hotmail) in one place. Writer, Compose your blog, add photos and video, then post it on the web. Movie Maker, Turn your photos and videos into great looking movies and slide shows. Family Safety, Manage and monitor online activities so your kids stay safe. Toolbar, Search instantly from any webpage. So they’re pretty self explanatory right? Mostly quite basic but they will give you a good ‘foot in the door’ feel, anyone who’s wanted to get a blog off the ground or make their first photo slide show will find this software perfect.

Windows Search

“…In Windows 7, you can find more things in more places and do it faster. Start typing into the Start menu search box—and you’ll instantly see a list of relevant documents, pictures, music, and e-mail on your PC. Results are now grouped by category and contain highlighted keywords and text snippets to make them easier to scan. Few people store all their files in one place these days. So Windows 7 is also designed to search external hard drives, networked PCs, and libraries. Overwhelmed by your search results? You can instantly narrow them by date, file type, and other useful categories…” it’s a search engine, nothing here to get too excited about, sure its quick and it does narrow the searches well but again it’s something that has been somewhat overlooked in previous versions of windows, Vista’s version was a vast improvement but the search engine in Windows 7 is now actually a feature and not just programmers panicking at the last minute and rustling something up.

So last time we spoke about Windows 7 I perhaps got a little too excited about how quickly it installs, can’t fully guarantee I won’t get excited whilst writing this either. What I plan to do now is put some snippets from the Microsoft website about new features in Windows 7 and give some advice on how they work in reality.

New ways to juggle windows

Overwhelmed by open windows? Windows 7 comes with three simple yet powerful new features called Aero Shake, Aero Peek, and Snap to help you instantly clear through desktop clutter.

“…Aero Shake – Ever need to cut through a cluttered desktop and quickly focus on a single window? Just click a pane and give your mouse a shake. Voila! Every open window except that one instantly disappears. Jiggle again—and your windows are back. (Who says the old mouse can’t learn a new trick?)…” So this is pretty cool right? Having a nice interface that doesn’t require you to have 30gig of RAM is always welcome.

“…Aero Peek – gives you the power of X-ray vision, so you can peer past all your open windows straight to the Windows 7 desktop. Simply point to the right edge of the taskbar —and watch open windows instantly turn transparent, revealing all your hidden icons and gadgets. Quickly reveal a buried window by pointing to its taskbar thumbnail. Now only that window shows on the desktop…” It’s not actually x-ray vision before you start jumping around. Although this isn’t available on the Starter version of Windows 7 it’s still a nice feature to have, gives the OS a ‘complete’ feeling – like it’s really been worked on this time instead of rushed out with a ridiculous price tag.

“…Snap is a quick (and fun) new way to resize open windows, simply by dragging them to the edges of your screen. Depending on where you drag a window, you can make it expand vertically, take up the entire screen, or appear side-by-side with another window. Snap makes reading, organizing, and comparing windows a…well, you get the picture…” Hhmmm after using Windows 7 for a while I didn’t really get on with this, sure it’s a cool feature and as I said before it does give the feeling of a good development team but the double click on the top of the window or simply ‘maximising’ is still king in my eyes.

Spectacular new wallpapers

“…We spend a lot of time staring at our PCs. Aesthetics shouldn’t just be an afterthought. That’s why Windows 7 includes a slew of new desktop backgrounds—wallpapers—that range from sublime to silly. Or try the new desktop slide show, which displays a rotating series of pictures (ours or yours). Your desktop will never be dull again. Windows 7 makes it easy to express your personality with creative new themes and other custom touches…” This, at first, seemed a little bizarre. Did Microsoft actually pay someone to go around the world taking nice pictures to put into their Operating System? And if so how do you apply for something like that!? However actually using this feature I was able to put some of my better holiday snaps on a rotation for my desktop and then in turn a friend of mine inserted a ‘fruity internet picture’ in said rotation – all fine until family came round to see my holiday snaps from Italy – bad times…

Retooled taskbar

“…Since Windows 95, the taskbar has served as the go-to spot for launching programs and switching windows. Times and PC habits have changed. So in Windows 7, the taskbar has been completely redesigned to help you work smarter, cut clutter, and get more done. Improvements to the new Windows 7 taskbar include thumbnail previews of WebPages, documents—even running video…” Ok, I’m gonna get REALLY excited here as this is my one of my favourite features about Windows 7. The new taskbar is fantastic in its simplicity, if you have multiple web pages open simply hover over the icon on the taskbar and it will display all the windows you have open in a smaller, thumbnail format just above the taskbar. You can then move your cursor up onto any of the pages, which will change super fast on the actual desktop, and then you just click on the one you’d like to view and Voilá! The same goes for multiple anything really, if you have Windows Media Player open it will show the movie playing in thumbnail, multiple folders open e.t.c.  Making it unbelievably easy to navigate all open items – gone are the days of having 70 instances of things open on the taskbar, having them all clumped up together and being unable to read any of them. Good work Microsoft fellas – not something you hear often.

Improved gadgets

“…Gadgets, the popular mini-programs introduced in Windows Vista, are now more flexible and fun. Based on your feedback, we’ve done away with the Sidebar, so you can stick your gadgets anywhere on the desktop. Favourite gadgets can go anywhere on your Windows 7 desktop…” Now I never really liked the sidebar in Windows Vista I think mainly because it slowed start-up so much, used so much RAM and realistically I don’t need a clock in the top right when the time is displayed on the taskbar. Sure there’s some good add ons for monitoring core temps and RAM usage e.t.c. With more and more people making add ons, or Gadgets as they’re more commonly known, hopefully they’ll be more and more useful ones.

Ok, so we’ve all heard that Microsoft are producing another operating system called Windows 7 but will it be any good? After their last lack lustre release of Windows Vista will people still put their hard earned cash into another Microsoft flight of fancy? Well after having used the release candidate version, that has been available for several months now free of charge, I can say YES! It’s everything Vista should have been! Over the next few weeks our techie supremos will break down the main features for you, perform comparisons to the current Windows XP favourite that the majority of us are still using and give some hints and tips to lesser known features from an end users point of view. Below is a little taster of things to come.

Let’s start with how it installs, after all this will be the first step for anyone, if you’re upgrading from Vista the install process can take a while as Windows 7 will change the settings and keep all the user information as is on your system but as with any new OS (operating System) it’s always advised to do a fresh install. I’ve been a techie for quite a number of years now and as with all techies anything that happens REALLY quickly gets us excited, I have quite a mid range PC just now (AMD X2 6000 processor, 4 gig RAM, 4800 series ATI graphics card) nothing particularly punchy, sure it’s not the slowest of PC’s but for the hardware that’s out there at the minute its mid range for sure. From putting the disc into the drive, allowing the CD drive as the first boot device and selecting the type of install I would like to perform it took 20 minutes, that’s right 20 MINUTES! I was astonished, sure it was missing a couple of drivers but only a couple, bearing in mind I installed this months ago when there was little to no drivers available an all round great result so already I’m impressed.

If anyone has used the help system in Windows XP or Vista you’ll know it’s pretty dilute however not so in Windows 7, it advised me that it had problems installing my Creative X-Fi sound card and would I like to use the online support, here we go I thought, a breadcrumb trail that leads nowhere… it proved me wrong! It advised me that I needed to download an additional driver from the creative site and put the web address on-screen for me, I thought ok, it’s better than the last help and support but I know where the homepage is, I clicked on the link anyway just to see where it would lead me. As I clicked the link a download dialog page appeared asking me where I would like to download the driver too, GENIUS! Although I’m not sure I should have got so excited about an enormous company like Microsoft finally getting their help and support system finally working after 2 OS’s and over 10 years of development.

What this does show us though is that Microsoft is finally listening to customers’ feedback about how users would like the software to work with the key responses being “…just make the features included work correctly and quickly…” – sadly something that Vista fell short on, very short.  So next time on the blog we’re going to go through some of the new features of Windows 7 and how they compare to Windows XP and the equivalent Vista features, stay tuned.

Here is our follow on article on the Look and Feel of Windows 7.