Windows 7, just a month away (part 1)

Windows 7, the next version of the most widely used operating system, is about to be officially released on 22nd October 2009. On January 9th 2009 Microsoft offered a free download of the Beta version and millions of people across the Globe downloaded their copy, installed it on their machines, and the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. It looks like only three years after the launch of Vista, Microsoft actually has decided to make an operating system with less whistles and bells, a system that is a robust and stable. And it seems that this time they got it right!

The new Windows will come in seven different editions, from the very limited Starter Edition, which was originally designed to allow the end-user to run only three applications at the same time – a restriction, which was said to have been removed, to the special EU edition, which will ship without the Microsoft browser Internet Explorer. The Family pack, which can be installed on up to three different computers, will be released in the US and Canada in October 2009, but won’t be available in the UK until at least 2010.

So, what did people that have tried the Beta have to say? The first thing that everybody noticed was that Windows 7 is fast! And it is fast not only compared to the bloated Windows Vista, but compared to XP as well. It also offers a great user interface, which should help the average user find and run things much easier and faster. Even though the desktop improvements might seem small, they sure make a huge difference. I work with a lot of text files, sometimes I copy from the one and paste to the other, and I like putting two text editor’s windows next to each other in order to compare them. In Windows XP I had to resize and drag the two windows and it would take me almost a minute to align them next to each other. With Windows 7 once you open two programs that you want to compare, simply drag them to the opposite sides of your screen and they will snap together: it’s as easy as that!

Managing the taskbar and the system tray is much easier as well – now you can “pin” your programs and files to the taskbar and later launch them with a single click, the icons are pretty big so you don’t have to guess what they are, hover your mouse cursor over them and you will see the “preview pane” – thumbnails of the different windows’ instances that the program has open.

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