In the first time in the 6 (?) years since I got it, my desktop is running something other than Windows XP. To celebrate this landmark occasion, I decided I’d write some of my initial thoughts about it. But to be fair, and as is often the case, Penny Arcade did manage to sum up pretty much everything I’d say into just three panels.
My initial impressions are that it looks nice and my computer doesn’t seem to be going any slower than it did on XP. I realize that all this really tells you is that it isn’t worse than XP, but considering Vista, this is an important point to make as it means that 7 is a lot faster than Vista. Faster bootup, faster loading or peripherals, less clutter running all the time, just all around faster. I also realize that at this point everything I’ll say is about the new features, so I’ll organize the rest of this accordingly and with links the Microsoft’s discussion of them.
This to me has limited usability. And by that I mean I can’t really use it. It’s basically an easier way to have a shared folder on a network. Not super useful if you ask me since you’ve been able to do this for years. In fact you could do it in XP. This just makes the concept more user friendly but only works if you have someone else on your network running windows 7. Maybe if Orey upgrades we’ll be able to test this then but in the meantime I’m going to say that this isn’t such a big deal.
This basically attaches your recent files to a program. If you right click a program on the taskbar or in the start menu, it gives you a list of your recent documents with that program. Or, in some cases it gives you some useful tasks. Sounds nice, and I guess the recent document thing is cool but I’m not amazed by it. It saves you a few clicks, but thats about it. To be fair though, I think this is one of those things that will be more useful once more programs actually implement it. For example, Firefox and Thunderbird don’t give me any special commands or recent documents but Internet Explorer gives me some frequently visited sites and the ability to to open in it private browsing mode or open a new tab. In short, that means that Firefox/Thunderbird don’t give me any options, and IE gives me stupid ones. But again, I can see this being used well in the future so it’s kind of a cool feature.
I thought this meant that Windows was doing the Linux thing where if two window borders were near each other as you were moving them around they would “snap” together but it’s not. This is hard to explain so if you’re interested you might want to watch the video in the link but the point is that it’s a quick(?) way to re-size a window to a pre-determined size. Drag the window to the right side of the screen and if you let go it will re-size the window to take up the right half of the screen. Similar for the left. The top makes it fullscreen. Why you wouldn’t just click fullscreen I have no bloody clue. Seems worthless to me. Maybe if you were able to save a screen layout that you liked? That might be better.
This is just a new suite of windows software that you would expect to come packed in. Now that let you pick and choose which ones you want to download. Not much to say here without reviewing each product separately, which is a post for another day.
They made the search capabilities in the start menu and explorer better. It does in fact seem better/faster/more thorough and the results are arranged nicer. Not much to say here either. It seems nice.
I actually really like what they did with the taskbar. Instead of displaying each window of a program as it’s own button, they are all clumped together by default, and when you click it a new window pops up that shows a snapshot of each windows associated with that program that you can select. Oh, and you can move around items on your taskbar finally. I remember this used to bother me, but I’ve long since stopped caring. Still, thumbs up all around for the improvements here.
You can turn off/manage those annoying as hell message balloons on your taskbar. Enough said.
I mentioned before that I like how this version looks. This is due in large part to the Aero theme that is a revised variant of the Vista one. The difference is that it works now and doesn’t slow you computer down to a crawl.
Still seem largely useless to me. I know these were big at one time when they were called widgets but since then I think they’ve gone out of style. It seems to me like only Mac users still cling to these things. I’ve yet to find a widget that was the most convenient way of getting a task done. That being said, you can now move them around wherever you want now. Meaning that they’ve finally caught up to the original widgets.
Now this I like. Now you don’t have to hit print screen and crop out the portion of your image anymore. If you want a snapshot of something on your screen just open the snipping tool and select it. Handy!
I know Linux has had these for a while. The point is that you can put up a little sticky note anywhere on your desktop to be used in any way you would use a normal sticky note. This used to be a gadget I think, but now it’s more full featured and actually seems useful. I can drag them around, change the color, re-size them, or add info to them pretty quickly.
Want to see what’s behind all the windows you have cluttering the screen? Move your mouse to the bottom right and they all become transparent. I guess this is primarily to be used with the sticky notes or gadgets. Kind of cool either way though.
There are plenty of other small features that you can peruse at you leisure on Microsoft’s site but I think I covered all the major ones. Overall, I like it. You should definitely ditch Vista for it. And if you’re a student, you can get the Home Premium version of it for just $30. Definitely a recommended buy at that price.
Or you could just use Linux.
Just sayin.
-Tony
