Windows 7

About a month ago I upgraded from Vista to Windows 7. Now, before I go into what I think of Windows 7, I should mention two things so you know where I'm coming from. First, I really enjoyed Vista, and I wasn't plagued with problems as it seems a lot of people have been. I don't know if I just got lucky, or if most people are just a bunch of babies who whine all the time, but either way, I was generally happy with Vista. Second, I did not pay for Windows 7. I got a new laptop at the beginning of this school year, and it came with a coupon for a free copy of Windows 7 when it came out. Okay, now time for my thoughts on it.

One of my favorite changes in 7 is the new taskbar. Since the taskbar has been basically the same for many many years, at least since Windows 3.1, it's nice to see them finally update it. Basically, the long, text buttons have been replaced by icons similar to shortcuts on your desktop (except without the text). This is the obvious difference, and is very nice because it frees up much more room on your taskbar. This is particularly important because of the next new feature: you can pin programs to the taskbar. This means that a pinned program's icon will stay on the taskbar even when it isn't open. If the program isn't open, clicking the icon will, of course, open it. If it is already open, clicking the icon will bring that window to the front, just like on the old taskbar. And don't worry, it is easy to tell which programs you have open, because when they are open, the background behind them changes (and how it looks varies from program to program, in a very asthetically pleasing way, but that is just an added bonus). I love this feature, because now I can just pin the programs I use most onto the taskbar, making it easier to access them. There are other nice features about the new taskbar, like being able to easily rearrange the icons on it, whether pinned or not, and recent popup menus, but I won't go into all of them. Suffice it to say, the new taskbar rocks.

There are two other new features that I find particularly nice. These are called Snap and Peek. Snap is where you can snap a window to the left or right side of the screen. Doing this will make it resize to fill up the left or right half of the screen. This is very handy when viewing two windows at once, which I do a lot. Also, it is very easy to do this. All you do is drag the window to the left or right until the cursor is touching the edge of the screen, and then release. You can also drag it to the top of the screen to maximize it, but this isn't all that useful since there has been a button to do this on all windows for a very long time. Peek is not quite as useful in my opinion, but it can be nice. Imagine that you have many windows open, of all different sizes and located all over your screen. Now, with Peek, if you hover your cursor over the icon of an open window (on the taskbar), all the other windows will disappear, leaving only the outlines of them behind, and you will be able to see the window of the icon you are hovering over. I imagine that I will use this more often as I get used to it, (and as I remember that it exists more) but either way, its kinda cool. There is also something called Shake, but I haven't found it useful at all and I don't really like it. Basically, you click on a window, shake it (move your mouse back and forth rapidly a few times) and all other open windows will minimize.

There is one more feature that I really like. Vista brought about the days of UAC, which, if you have ever used Vista, is the thing that makes the screen darken and asks you if you really want to do what you just told it to do. If you haven't used Vista, just think of it as something that triple checks if you want to do anything (that is an exaggeration, but you get the idea). This feature makes things a little more secure, because it helps prevent programs from making changes to important stuff without your permission, like if you have some kind of virus or spyware/shareware, etc, but it does get annoying when it asks if you really want to delete a shortcut from the Start Menu. In Vista, this was either on or off, but in 7, you have some control over what exactly it asks for confirmation on. This allows you to keep the extra security without being asked five times if you really want to do what you just said to do.

Overall, I really like Windows 7. It has some nice new features that make things a little easier and faster. It also works with most of my programs (I even have a Windows 95 game running on it, though it doesn't run perfectly). At the same time, I don't think these flashy new features make it worth the $100+ price tag. It seems to me to be just a nice upgrade of vista. If I had not gotten it for free, I wouldn't have gotten it. My advice to anyone considering buying it is this: don't buy it to upgrade a computer you already have, but if you are looking at buying a new computer, make sure it comes with Windows 7. I hope you found this helpful.