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Windows 7What’s in?

If you’re an avid lover of Windows Live Writer and SnagIt – the two must have blogging tools to get things done, you got to be running a copy of Windows on your machine. I have always had a similar setup, as in a dual boot with Linux. There is nothing I’ve come across, that beats these tools in what they’re capable of.

If reviews are to be believed, Windows 7 has given its users a never before experience. For close to seven years, Windows XP has been an ardent resource to millions of users across the globe with around 71% users as compared to its successor, Windows Vista with a 19% share before Windows 7 was launched. This pretty much reveals the lack of interest that Windows Vista was able to create among the users in its short span of little below 3 yrs. Microsoft then came up with its latest offering in the Operating systems bandwagon – Microsoft Windows 7.

Charlie Miller, an award winning security researcher said,

“Hacking into Windows 7 is a much more of a daunting task than hacking into Apple’s recently launched Snow Leopard.”

Windows 7 predominantly focuses on overcoming the flaws of its predecessor (Vista), and is widely perceived as a much needed upgrade to a resource hogging and sluggish Vista. After using it for more than a month, I decided to come up with its Good, Bad and Ugly:

• Design – The most obvious and noticeable change in Windows 7 is its new shiny and smart design. The taskbar is transparent and loses it Quick launch feature only to be replaced by a new feature which allows the user to pin applications to the taskbar. The taskbar also brings in a new feature known as the Jump lists, which allows user, an easy access to documents and commands that can run for a particular application. The show desktop icon on the far right does the obvious, but also hovering on this button makes all the open windows transparent allowing a quick overview, a feature also known as the Aero Peek.
• Install and Boot times – The installation time is not drastically reduced from that of Vista, but Windows 7 sure is lightweight and fast and can deliver on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. The startup and shutdown time is definite improvement, making it a smooth & stable contender.
• Security – The Windows Security Center, now known as Windows Action Center in Windows 7 integrates both the system security and maintenance. Microsoft has worked on the User Account Control security feature to reduce the unnecessary security pop-ups that kept irritating a user in Vista.

Other notable features include improved touch and handwriting recognition, windows media center with improved extender functionality for game consoles and a neat virtual hard drive support. I typically liked omission of a certain features and services like – Windows Mail, Movie Maker and Live Photo Gallery.

One major qualm with Windows 7 is the hit that it takes in terms of performance in most aspects in comparison to the veteran Windows XP or Windows Vista.

A rather disappointing part about Windows 7 could be the fact that users currently running Windows XP, have to go for a clean install if they need to move on to Windows 7. That calls for a denial but many of them. The other fact is the price for upgrading from Vista to Windows 7. How many people who bought a Vista machine 6 months ago would be willing to spend another 119$ to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium?

Microsoft’s efforts in plugging the holes created by Vista seems to have taken the right direction so far in the form of Windows 7.

How do you find your operating system – Good, bad or Ugly?

Written by Praval Singh, co-founder, blogger and social media evangelist at Media Redefined. Follow @Praval