WINDOWS 7 : A REVIEW

This is an impressive article by one of my friends Suryakanta...Worth Reading !!!

Overview:

• To describe Windows 7 in a few words it is Windows Vista with a few new features, with all the bugs fixed, the annoyances removed and the rough edges smoothed out.

• The first public beta is exceptionally stable and solid. By comparison, it is more stable in its first beta release than either XP or Vista was when they were released to manufacturer.

• With very few exceptions, any hardware that works with Vista will work with Windows 7.

• Windows 7 is about 22% smaller than Vista. Some of this size reduction is because things like Windows Mail, Calendar, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and Contacts (address book) have been removed from Windows 7 and are now part of the download able Windows Live Essentials. The rest is due to tighter, more polished code.

• Every honest review I’ve read about Windows 7 has commented on its performance. In actual performance bench tests, Windows 7 exceeded XP and Vista on just about every measure.

• Windows 7 running on notebooks has shown to be much more reliable with its ability to sleep and resume than XP or Vista.

• The Windows 7 power management tools are easy to get to, and estimates of remaining battery life are generally quite accurate, which certainly wasn’t the case with Windows XP.

Desktop Search

• Probably the biggest advance in Windows 7 search though, is the way that the Start menu search works. In Vista, you can type a term into the Search box, and you get a subset of the total results. If the thing you’re looking for isn’t in that list, you have to click Search Everywhere and fuss with an extra set of options in Windows Explorer. In Windows 7, each heading is a live, clickable link

• Clicking any of those headings opens an Explorer window restricted to just that type of search result and with a much friendlier set of options that makes it easy to scan results quickly

Window Management

• After using Windows 7 for a little while, I find the window handling features to have become automatic. When I go back to a computer running XP or Vista, I find I really miss them.

• Comparing contents two different folders or documents is much easier with Windows 7.

• Expanding a window to full screen and back by dragging it.

• The Show Desktop feature, commonly referred to as “Aero Peek” is used frequently. Some call it “eye candy” but I find it very useful. I keep several gadgets on my desktop.

Improved User Interface

• there are many differences “Gestures" that will interpret your mouse hovering over something as an indication that you'd like to see more information about it.

• Moving your mouse over a Taskbar button brings up horizontal preview thumbnails of each document open in an app, and hovering over one of those brings up a full-screen preview of the document.

New Applications

• Some new apps are included like Sticky Notes and Snipping Tool.

Better Security

• Windows 7 isn’t a huge step forward from Vista in security, but does include some useful additions, including security for something that more and more people are using: USB thumb drives. (Requires the Group Policy editor)

• IT departments can set a group policy that forces USB drives to be encrypted before the employee's allowed to copy files off the corporate network on to the stick, saving IT departments from employing more drastic measures, such as disabling USB ports.

Less Annoying

• In Vista it is the UAC (User Account Control) that is responsible for the incessant pop-ups that ask you if you're sure you want to install this app, or delete that file, or allow access to this drive to this program.

• In Windows 7, the UAC enforcement can be adjusted with a slider ranging from Always Notify to never Notify and two settings in between.

Summary:

• I believe that Windows 7 will be the success that Microsoft had hoped for with Vista. There is nothing really wrong with Vista other than the bad reviews it received. The lack of drivers and the increased hardware requirements got it off to a bad start and it never recovered.