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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.