The look of Windows 7 is very different from XP or Vista, and the sleek interface isn't just eye candy; it's functional, practical and delivers better performance.
The large taskbar combines the pinned icons of the XP Quick Launch toolbar with full-size icons and the thumbnail previews of Vista, made extra useful because you can preview and manipulate them.
On the taskbar you can pin icons for programs next to icons for open documents and choose the order they appear in. Subtle design elements show you which apps are running and which aren't, which have multiple windows, and which have been pinned so they'll stay on the taskbar and which will disappear when you close them.
And icons can animate, to show the progress bar for a download or an overlay indicating new messages or whether you're signed in. It's all very slick.
If you right-click an application's icon on the taskbar, you get a jump list of previous files you've used with that program, with the option to close the app without switching to it; again this gives you a huge boost in productivity from a very simple change.
App developers can also choose to add extra commands; links to common tasks and features like your Outlook 2010 inbox or your favourite Windows Media playlists.
Web browsing
Assuming you choose to keep it on your PC, Internet Explorer in Windows 7 doesn't have any new features over the version for Vista and XP.
What you do get with IE is a jumplist that lets you open a new tab or start an InPrivate browsing session; subtle but welcome integration if you actually use the Microsoft browser.
The InPrivate Browser mode lets you surf whilst not leaving any trace of your internet use when you close down the browser, whilst InPrivate Blocking prevents information being passed to sites.
More interface tweaks
Dragging windows into the corners to snap them to fit half the screen and using Aero Peek, to preview the desktop with outlines of open windows seem like small changes from the XP and Vista interface but they make you hugely more productive because you can find the window you want to work with and put it where you can see it.
Under the covers the new window management code has a significant impact on performance; you get the power and stability of the Vista graphics system (in XP a graphics driver crash will blue screen the system, in Vista and 7 your screen will go black and then come back to life) without the impact on speed.
As long as you have a WDDM 1.1 driver you can have large numbers of windows open without that alone slowing things to a crawl.
Windows 7 doesn't nag you the way Windows Vista and XP do either; there are very few balloon notifications after the initial warning from the new Action Centre if you don't have anti-virus installed.
Instead, the icon for the Action Centre gets a flag when it has a message for you and all the other icons that used to fill the corner of the screen are tidied up into a pop-up notification area.
You can drag them back if you want them on show, but this finally solves the perennial problem in XP of the expanding notification area not showing or hiding the icons you asked it to.
The network connection icon is a menu for connecting to Wi-Fi (and 3G if you have a broadband card or dongle; with some 3G hardware you won't even need to install drivers); again, not having to delve through multiple windows as in XP and Vista saves a lot of time.
And another little convenience; you no longer have to choose between seeing the time or the date in the corner of the screen – the taller taskbar fits in both.
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prospero
November 21st
1. I've got my Windows 7 Ultimate version from my work as an upgrade. According to the given information, this software could be installed from Windows XP 64 bit. So I entered the cd in the drive. First impression during installation was wow! But then after clicking install, I got the message that I couldn't perform an upgrade from XP64. So I selected the custom install. All went well. The software installed itself on my machine after I created a new partition and formatted it. You have to create a new partition cause Windows wants to add a small partition of 100mb for own purposes. Everything installed well and the machine restarted. Completing install... ... ... ... .. and then everything becomes quite silent. No messages, no activity. That's strange I thought. I performed the Microsoft compatability test and my machine should be 100% compatible with the software so what went wrong. Tried to install several times. Looked on the internet for a solution to find that many people experienced the same problem. I tried and tried again for more than 15 times to install during which everything not essentially necessary for the computer to run was taken out (cards) or turned of in the BIOS. Then I decided that I would get a new graphics card just to try if that was the problem the installation faulted. Well... it was not. I heared that some people restarted the computer and at the installation message that all went wrong and I had to reinstall from the beginning, they pressed shift and F-10 and typed explorer.exe from the commandline. With me the computer then started to do something but halted anyway somewhere during installation. Again, no error message what so ever to work with. Then I got an idea. I reinstalled (we're talking about the 32nd installation try-out now!) and waited patiently for the 'completing installation' to appear. Immediately at the beginning of this phase, I hit the shift and F10 buttons and typed 'explorer.exe' at the commandline. Two processes were now running. This helped. Don't ask me why, but the installation now went on up until I could create a user and the installation could finish as expected. Pfffffff. What a work. Two full days of trying to install a system on a relative young computer.
Then, next phase. Activating the software was not possible because... I had an upgrade but performed a clean install (as the software told me to do in earlier stages). I found a workaround on the www I could edit in the registry to get passed the registration issues. I did buy a legal version of the software and followed the correct steps during installation so I'm not doing anything wrong. Then I noticed my external harddrive on the IEEE 1394 port was not recognized. On the www I found this to be an old problem from the Vista times. Obviously Microsoft has not taken any steps to get rid of this issue while programming the Win 7 version.
Now at last playing a bit with a working installation I've found one of the first issues why the software installation jammed. My computer is able to work around a memory hole (you can turn this on or off in the BIOS) to make the best use of the memory available. Never before a problem on any of the 32bit or 64bit windows versions, or with linux installations. I've found that Windows 7 can't handle this and jams when this option is turned on in the BIOS of the computer. The new graphics card was not necessary.
All in all, compared to for instance the up to date Linux Ubunty 64 bit software installation which performes on excellent level and can be installed by a completely non computer guy, Microsoft Windows looks great, but is delivered with an installation a big guy like Microsoft should be very very ashamed off.
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