#160 - Windows 7 is coming

Happy Bastille Day! Today we'll take a first look at Microsoft's new operating system, catchily named Windows 7. This replacement for the disaster named Vista is due out October 22. Even now you can buy a PC from HP and get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out. Not sure I would jump on that wagon quite yet. So lets see what improvements Windows 7 has besides having a different name. All our comments are based on the "beta" (that means trial) version of Windows 7 available today.

The best news is that Windows 7 is that it is faster and requires less resources then Vista. All the trial test show speed comparable to XP with slightly faster start ups and shut downs. The downside is that many of the Vista bells and whistles are still around - Aero, the graphics interface being one that not many will use, but take up huge amounts of Windows 7 resources. Windows 7 does have an "XP Mode" that will allow anything that ran on XP to run on Windows 7. This is a major big deal for business. Now whether the "XP Mode" runs as fast as original XP is what users will have to test out with their software.

The improvement's that Microsoft thinks we need are as follows: The taskbar has been given more functionality (hmmm sounds like Apple's OS X). You can pin documents and programs there and there are jump lists that open your most frequently used items. Thumbnail previews have been added in the system so you no longer have to guess at what is in a document when you hover over it with your arrow. Of course you may need bifocals or a magnifying glass to use this feature. For sharing files Microsoft has added something called Homegroups that makes it easier to share files in your group or at home between users. Microsoft calls Windows 7 their most "stable" operating system ever and that is what users want. The bugs and quirks of Vista have made many scared (and rightfully so) of new operating systems. An unstable release of Windows 7 might be a fatal disaster for Microsoft.