12 Things You Should Know About Windows 7

Windows 7 launched last week and it’s setting records left and right.  Amazon has said it was their biggest pre-order launch ever.  Reviewers around the globe are calling it the best version of windows yet, and even Walt Mossberg of the WSJ, unapologetic Apple fanboy, has decreed it as reaching parity with OS X.  What makes it so great, though? Read on for twelve things on our list.

The new taskbar
Love it or hate it, Microsoft made a lot of fundamental changes to the way the taskbar works in Windows 7. More than anything, it’s really a combination of the old “quick launch” toolbar and the active taskbar from Windows Vista. Entries have gone from a big button with the title of the window to just a square with the icon. The new taskbar has a number of features over the old one: media players like iTunes, Zune and WMP have playback controls in the dynamic pop-up window preview and browser like IE (and the upcoming Firefox 3.7) offer individual tab shots. Want to change it back to the version seen in Windows XP and Vista? Right-click on the taskbar and select ‘Properties’. In the ‘Taskbar buttons’ drop-down menu, choose either ‘Never combine’ or ‘Combine when taskbar is full’. Additionally, if you like the new taskbar the way it is but think it’s just a tad too thick, you can check the ‘Use small icons’ box to cut the height by 25% or so.

Improved window tiling
In previous versions of Windows, it was difficult to easily arrange windows in such a way that maximized efficient use of your desktop. In Windows 7, it’s easy. Drag the top or bottom of the window to the top or bottom of the screen, and the application will jump to fill that vertical column (while still maintaining horizontal width). Drag the whole window to the top to maximize it or to the left and right to tile it across one half of the screen.

Great keyboard shortcuts
The taskbar and windowing we mentioned earlier? It’s all accessible via keyboard shortcuts. Since the taskbar is something of a glorified Quick Launch, the same keyboard shortcuts work to launch any apps you’ve pinned: hit the Windows key + a number one through zero (ten) to launch any of the first ten apps you’ve pinned to the taskbar.  Similarly, use the Windows key + up, down, left or right to tile your windows as you see fit. Up will maximize them, down will restore them (or minimize them, if they aren’t already maximized) whereas left and right will split them down one half of the screen. If you’re using multiple monitors, just keep pressing the proper arrow key, and you can move your applications all around your workspace.

Native ISO functionality
Popularity of the optical disc may slowly be waning in favor of digital solutions such as downloads or removable storage media, but it still has its uses. In older versions of Windows, burning a .ISO file required users to download some alternately sketchy or expensive third-party software. In Windows 7, it’s as simple as right-clicking on the file and selecting what drive it’s using to burn the item to disc.Multitouch capabilities
Up until now, any computers — either notebook or desktop — that have implemented multitouch features have been using functionality shoehorned forcefully into the operating system by device manufacturers.  It’s been like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Win7, however, includes support for these inputs natively, making the all-around experience much smoother. In fact, Microsoft has even gone out of their way to take some of the features implemented in their multitouch Surface tables and push them into the general OS.

Cheaper than ever
Most people don’t really notice the cost of a Windows license since it’s built into the pre-built computers that make up the vast majority of what most people buy. There are an awful lot of XP and Vista computers out there, however, and there’s no real reason why they should miss out on all the fun. If you have an .edu e-mail address, Microsoft will let you buy Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional for just $29.99 (to get Professional, click on the link that says you need to join a domain). You can also buy a ‘family pack’ which consists of 3 Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade licenses for just $150. While these are upgrades and not full versions, you can still use them on a clean system by using the “double install” trick that was popularized with the rise of Windows Vista.

Libraries
Windows XP introduced a number of file-specific folders to the operating system and Vista expanded on these, with examples like Pictures, Videos, etc. Windows 7 takes all of this a step further by using meta-folders known as Libraries. Libraries are useful for looking at file collections all at once, without having to browse to multiple folders. As an example, let’s look at the ‘Pictures’ library. Let’s say you have three directories where pictures are stored – the default My Pictures, a image collection on a second hard drive, and maybe a third directory somewhere else on the computer. There are any number of reasons why you might want to store these files separately, but be able to view them as a whole – that’s where libraries come into play.

To add a folder to a library, right-click on it, select ‘Include in library’ and choose in which library you wish to add it. No files are physically moved to the library – it creates symbolic links, instead. Now when you click on the Pictures library, you can see all of the photos from all of the directories you added, just as if you’d moved them. That’s not all, though. In previous versions of Windows, you could arrange folders by things like write date, size, etc. In the Pictures library, things are a little more down to earth – you can arrange all your pictures by month, day, rating, or even tags found in the metadata. What’s really handy is that you can even add external drives to the library, so if you pop in a thumb drive containing a series of images, you can add it to the library, take advantage of all the file view improvements, and pop it back out when you’re finished.

Homegroups
Homegroups are a new networking feature added by Microsoft to make setting up and sharing files and printers within a small home network easier. Traditionally it wasn’t too hard to share files – you just run the setup wizard, click what you want to do (i.e., share or not) and you’re good to go. It was somewhat arduous, however, to set up passwords and user accounts to restrict certain files and folders from some computers. Homegroup changes all of that. When you’re setting up your Windows 7 installation, you can choose to create or join a homegroup. Simply type in the password on subsequent computers and you’re good to go – only those computers that join the homegroup within a specific network have access to the files and libraries you’ve chosen. While Windows creates a rather obtuse password on its own, you can open the Homegroup icon in Control Panel to change it to something that’s a little easier to remember.

Performance
All right, so you’ve read our article comparing several benchmarks run on Windows 7 and Windows Vista – and to many people’s surprise, Vista came out ahead on a number of them. Does that mean you shouldn’t upgrade? No. Despite the way the tests turned out, Windows 7 just feels faster, in day-to-day use, than Windows Vista. There are improvements made to the application and file caching algorithms, power settings, and dramatic improvements made to sleep and wake processes. Furthermore, Windows 7 has lower system requirements, at least in terms of storage space. Within our office, we’ve installed Win7 on a number of netbooks, like the controversial Vaio P, for example, and they always felt faster with the new OS than with Vista.

XP Mode
If you’re running Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate or Enterprise, congratulations! You can use XP Mode, which is a virtualized, free copy of XP that runs within Windows 7. It’s a good solution if you have legacy software that simply will not run within Windows 7; instead, you can run it inside of an emulated Windows XP that sits on top of Windows 7. While most modern CPUs support the feature, not all do; you’ll need to check and see if your processor offers the required hardware virtualization.

Media Player and Media Center
Microsoft made a number of improvements to some of the media focused aspects of the operating system, too. Windows Media Player, for those of you not using something like iTunes, Zune, Last.fm, or Pandora, can now stream your music collection over the internet. Sign in with your Windows Live ID on a different computer (running the same version of WMP) and you’ll be able to see the libraries you shared in media player on your home computer. Media Center also got a boost with a new and improved Netflix interface as well as Internet TV collection, which now streams full CBS episodes and video podcasts from the Zune Marketplace.

Trippiest. Backgrounds. Ever.
All right, so maybe this one is something of a lark, but it’s hard to deny that Windows 7 is the most attractive version of Windows to date. Auto-rotating wallpapers, a gorgeous collection of themes and, as mentioned in the heading, some of the the craziest – in a good way – default backgrounds included with an operating system. If the pre-installed examples aren’t enough, or you just want to see the regional pictures for all the rest of the countries, Microsoft has put several new packs and collections online.

Do you have another handy Windows 7 tip or feature you think we should have covered, but didn’t? Be sure to sound off in the comments and share it with the rest of us.

source: notebookreview.com

1. 

   Indra says:

   October 28, 2009 at 10:57 pm

   Windows 7 is one of the best OS ever.. I’m fully satisfied with it and would recommend it to anyone. Worth the upgrade!