Windows 7, if it lives up to the hype, will be what Vista should have been. Here are the most notable points to be aware of:

Performance

Windows 7 and Windows Vista have exactly the same minimum hardware requirements; however, in-house testing showed the Beta of Windows 7 to be significantly faster than Windows Vista. It ran very well on a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM. Inability to run with acceptable performance on less than cutting edge hardware has been a major complaint from users of Windows Vista. Windows 7 performance seems on par with that of Windows XP on very similar hardware, while maintaining that polished, professional Vista look and feel.

Multitouch

Windows 7 is built for touch screens. Why should you care? Because it's cool! if you have a touch enabled laptop or desktop computer, run your finger across the screen in Internet Explorer to go back to the previous page. There is an easy to use on-screen keyboard, and you can use gestures on the screen to perform common mouse functions like double and right clicking. Trust us, when you see the implementation of touch features in Windows 7, you will be impressed!

New Taskbar

Through extensive research facilitated by the built in reporting features of Windows XP and Vista, Microsoft has learned a great deal about the user experience. For example, from data Microsoft knows that 70% of users have between 5 and 15 windows open at any one time, and that most of the time they only actively use one or two of those windows. With this kind of data, Microsoft has streamlined and refined the user experience. This led to the birth of the Windows 7 Taskbar. See image

The new Windows 7 interface introduces a larger toolbar that makes switching between tasks amazingly simple. A huge improvement over both Windows XP and Vista, the new taskbar area features fullsize thumbnail previews of open programs. This is nothing new, but the way it is implemented is. Applications are grouped, like the 5 web pages I may have open in tabs in Internet Eplorer 8. When the mouse hovers over the group, thumbnails fan out to allow the user to easily switch to the exact page or application he wishes to use. This behavior is similar to that of Vista, but the larger, live thumbnails and integration with the taskbar make it much more useful.

Libraries
These days, we manage our files by creating, naming, and moving directories and files around, but ever since the number of files on our hard drives started to increase beyond a total that we can wrap our brains around, people have been looking for ways to make it easier to manage, organise, and retrieve files.

If you have ever used Picasa, you probably love the way it automatically scans your drive for photos and arranges them into libraries based on date, file name, or folder name. Add a new pictures folder and it magically appears in your picture library. Windows 7 takes this concept and plugs into every document you use in Windows. See Image

Moved your pictures or music into seperate directories? Windows 7 will reindex the files and recreate libraries on the fly so you never have to "point to" the moved file ever again. Add 200 new mp3s to your collection and they will appear in your Media Player library without any effort from you.

Once you dive into what libraries can do, where they are used, and how you can use them, it becomes obvious that Microsoft has put a lot of thought into this useful feature.

Nag, Nag, Nag

User Account Control is a security feature built into Windows Vista that gets a lot of attention. That's because whenever the system needs permission to continue with a command or process, it pops up and asks the user to authorize each process. Sounds like a great proposition, but after the first few hundred of these alerts you will start to prefer being less secure. One of the biggest complaints about Vista is the number of pop-ups that require interaction from the user.

Windows 7 has drastically changed User Account Control. The service has been redesigned to give far fewer alerts, which will keep users happy!

Home Groups

Home networks are becoming more and more ubiquitous these days. More folks are sharing files, printers and music over their home networks. Previous Windows versions have seen progressive improvements to the process of sharing and setting up these networks, and Windows 7 introduces more improvements to home networking. The changes are made to interface Windows 7 with Windows Home Server, an operating system version made specifically for standalone servers and designed for home and small workgroup use. See Image

So, what does HomeGroup do? It automatically shares your music, video and picture libraries and printers across the network, allowing every member of the HomeGroup to gain access to them. Documents are by default not shared, but you can enable that too if you wish. Thanks to the top-to-bottom nature of Libraries, you can browse the Libraries on other computers in your HomeGroup from any computer on the network. In addition, there's a new "Share with" drop-down menu in Explorer that allows you to share any file with one click, in either Read or Read/Write mode. You can also choose to share with specific people, or select "Nobody", with obvious results. Network Location Awareness is employed to make sure you only share your stuff when you're actually at home.

HomeGroup really takes the pain out of setting up a network, and makes it all a much more pleasant experience.
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These are only some of the features that make Windows 7 worth a look. Keep your eyes and ears on this new Windows release. Rumor has it that Microsoft will have Windows 7 available for purchase by the end of the year (that's 2009!) While not an earth-shaking release, Windows 7, at this point looks like it may be the Windows we hoped for in 2006. As for me, I don't want another Windows ME.

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