Review of windows 7 - my thoughts

Windows7 is microsofts latest windows operating system. With loads of cool new features, massive speed improvements, more customisable security, and a redesigned taskbar, windows 7 is a deffinat improvement over Vista. Over the past year, i've been testing out windows 7's many features and improvements, on both new and old hardware. So, here is my short review; what's great, what's not changed, and what's just plain annoying?


The Taskbar.
Let's start with the taskbar. The new "superbar" is a windows version of the mac OSX "doc". It allows you to pin icons there for your frequently used applications, giving you 1 click access to those applications. It also allows you to access the applications 'jumplists', giving you instant access to, for example, the open tabs in internet explorer, or the recently played list of tracks in media player. WHen you've pinned your icons to the taskbar, and aranged them, you can use the windows key with a number to launch them. For example, windows key+1 for the first, windows+2 for the second, etc.


The start menu.
The windows 7 start menu hasn't change much from that found in vista; it still has the familiar search box, tree-style menus, and expandable shutdown icon. The search features are now more inteligent, and provide better and faster results. There is also now no clasic start menu option, as there was in windows vista and XP. This means, that if you prefer the start menu of windows 2000 or earlier, you must now use 3rd party add-ons. Microsoft, however, still provide a windows clasic theme for you to use, which is lighter on resources if you dont' want the arrow interface. To cut down on the resources, but keep the windows 7 look and feel, use "windows 7 basic"


The control panel.
The control panel is a massive improvement over previous versions. The category view is cleaner and finding the feature you're looking for has never been easier. There is no clasic view button, but to get the "clasic view" back simply click on the category button and select either large or small icons.

Windows media player 12.
Windows media player 12 is the new version of media player that ships with windows 7. While still not quite as good as iTunes, microsoft have made some real improvements in this version; when I launched it, the interface appears cleaner and buttons are labled correctly, the setup wizard was easier to follow, and it automatically added all of my music and found the missing tags online, leaving me with only 3 unknown songs, whereas iTunes left me with hundreds, if not thousands. This feature instantly impressed me; so I began experimenting with all it's new features; and was further amazed to find that list navigation was easy, the search feature worked, and was impressed (as mentioned above) with it's intigration with the windows 7 taskbar, allowing you to resume your playlist where you left off.

Other overall improvements.
As mentioned above, speed is one of the major changes in windows 7; no doubt about it. It's fast. The bootup time on my pc (2.60 GHZ, 2GB ddr2 ram, 500GB 7200 RPM hdd) is just over 23 seconds. With it's new prefetching, superfetching, and other features, it loads applications almost before you've clicked on the icons. Microsoft have also made the security features more customisable. One example of this is the User account control. User account control is a small background application that puts up an annoying prompt if an application tries to do something only admins can do, or if you change a setting on your computer that could have some bad affects. IN windows vista, customisation of this feature was limited; you could iether turn it off, or leave it on. HOwever, in widnows 7, there are now 4 customisation levels, that allow you to control the UAC prompts. TO disable it altogether, just drag the slider to 0.


The bad.
You may be thinking by now that I'm a huge ms fan, and I love everything about windows 7. That's not true. I like windows 7... it's windows; need I say more?. It does however, have it's bad points.

NO mail client.
Windows7, for whatever reason, no longer includes a default mail client. SO, the user is required to provide a mail client for themselves; or you can download windows live mail as part of the essentials package. Personally, I use and recommend mozilla thunderbird, though any version of outlook, window live mail, or anything else you prefer should work.

Compatibility.
WIndows7's compatibility is far from bad; in fact it's pretty good, and should run anything vista can. The only compatibility issues i've noticed, are issues when running old games that were designed for xp... but let's face it, who plays those anyway?
Microsoft do provide a freely downloadlbe package of windows XP, in a windows virtual machine, called "xp mode". It's free if you run 7 professional or ultimate, and is basicly the free virtual pc, and a free virtual machine of windows xp. Personally, I prefer VMWare; the performance of virtual pc is far from perfect, infact it's pretty slow and can be really unresponsive at times. However, it's free...

so should you upgrade?
Hmmmmmmm.......... probably. Chances are, if you're reading this and you don't have 7, you've got vista or XP, unless you've got a mac:). If you're running xp, it's getting outdated, and is time to upgrade. XP is nearly 9 years old... and they still install it on netbooks. Old OS, new hardware. the two just don't (or shouldn't) go together. If you're running vista, you'll love windows 7. It's loads faster, more relyable, and more customisable. So... everybody upgrade.