Aulia Masna

Windows 7 makes Vista’s features and designs much easier to use.

Windows 7: Windows Gets a Wash

It’s finally here, a Windows operating system to cure your Vista woes. Windows 7, as it is called, is not really the seventh version of Windows, though Microsoft would rather you thought otherwise. But, regardless of naming debates, to most people — and to Microsoft itself — what’s important is that it’s not Vista.

This year’s major operating system updates are, in essence, polished versions of their respective predecessors. Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard, released in August, is almost indistinguishable from Leopard until you explore its nooks and crannies. Windows 7 is also not so different — it’s simply a better functioning Vista.

Windows XP was released in 2001. Five years later, Microsoft created a brand new version of Windows in the form of Vista.

But there was so much negative feedback from early adopters of Vista that it became the OS many people pretend never existed.

As a result, the majority of Windows computers, especially in corporate environments, stuck with XP despite it being so far out of touch with the technology of the day. The old OS was robust enough that help desk and support personnel rarely bothered to recommend people upgrade.

A poll from Forrester Research had Windows XP emerge as the OS preferred by 81 percent of IT departments.

In the meantime, the onslaught of Mac OS X kept coming. While Mac sales slowly increased following the release of XP, they accelerated most rapidly in the months following Vista’s launch. Microsoft needed to act and Windows 7 is the result of three years of pruning and polishing.

Requiring a system specification identical to that of Vista, the latest version of Windows only needs a computer with a 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. My test machine was an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz with 1GB of RAM.

Installation took roughly 40 minutes, partly because I was using a freshly prepared hard drive with no documents or applications to deal with. Other people’s experience may be different, especially those who choose to upgrade from Windows XP.

Upgrading from XP requires a full backup of your documents and applications to another hard drive because installing Windows 7 will wipe out the contents of your drive. You then will need to put back all those documents and reinstall your applications into the new system. If you’re upgrading from Vista, things should be little less complicated as you can upgrade your system directly.

Let’s just get one thing straight: Windows 7 is a pleasant system to use even on a relatively old machine. Any machine that can run Vista will be able to run 7, no problem. So if you’ve been using Windows XP all this time, there’s little reason not to upgrade to 7, especially if you’re after a new machine anyway.

Although Vista introduced a lot of new features and designs, 7 makes them easier to use. One of the most talked about issues with Vista was the User Account Control which seemed to pop up with practically every other click. In 7, UAC is a lot less intrusive. In fact, for someone who uses a Mac on a daily basis it’s almost unnoticeable.

What you will notice when you use Windows 7 is the cleanliness of the interface. For example, the Start menu. In XP, clicking on this menu means opening a directory of applications which can span multiple columns across the screen. With 7, as first introduced in Vista, the menu is neatly contained in that pop-up rectangle

Each window used to have its own menu bar across the top of the screen. But now it’s hidden in some apps. It will show up if you press the alt key on your keyboard and will disappear again upon clicking elsewhere on screen. Apparently this extends to other applications too, even those not developed by Microsoft, such as Apple’s browser, Safari, though not QuickTime.

This brings a much cleaner look to the system, albeit something that takes getting used to.

The purpose of the Taskbar located along the bottom of the screen has been expanded. You can now pin applications to the Taskbar to act as a launch pad for your most used applications. While this is similar to the Dock in Mac OS X, you can preview each window of an active application at the same time by hovering your mouse over it.

Hovering a preview window will enlarge it to its full size while at the same time hiding all of the active window on the desktop. This is part of a feature called Aero Peek, Microsoft’s answer to both Expose and Dock Expose in Mac OS X which can show windows hidden under stacks of other windows.

New in the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen is the Explorer icon. Clicking on it will bring up an explorer window akin to Mac’s Home folder. In it you’ll find folders, or libraries, for your documents, music, movies and pictures. By offering predetermined locations for your files, 7 potentially reduces the clutter that is regularly found on desktops across so many computers.

While Explorer still presents the old hierarchy of folders, it now does it in a much more elegant way, by presenting a list of sections separated into Favorites, Libraries, Computer and Network. By default, Favorites include your Desktop, Downloads and Recent Places, while Libraries holds the above mentioned folders.

Windows 7 surprisingly does away with seemingly basic applications such as e-mail client, photo organizer, a calendar, movie editor and address book. These applications are now part of a package called Windows Live Essentials which can be downloaded at no cost from Microsoft’s Web site.

They even make it easy to download this package by including a link in the Start menu. And if you buy a new PC with Windows 7 pre-installed you may find these apps pre-installed as well. They’re just not available from the Windows installation disc.

If you’re familiar with Gadgets in Windows Vista, they’re still there in 7 but no longer pinned to the sidebar. The Gadgets float directly over the desktop giving you quick access to information such as the weather, the time, the load you’re putting on the computer and many more.

You can add more Gadgets by downloading them from the internet — it’s similar to the Dashboard Widgets in Mac OS X.

Dealing with networks is also a friendlier affair. Setting up your home network, finding other computers connected to said network, and sharing files, photos, movies and other documents are a click away. All you have to do is verify each computer with the same password so they can “see” each other.

Connecting devices are also a snap. Windows 7 easily recognizes hard drives, printers, scanners and cameras.

Unfortunately there was no device around to test the multitouch feature of this new system. It would have been quite an experience to check out how Windows 7 deals with multitouch on a desktop machine, as opposed to mobile devices.

If you weren’t thrilled by Vista, Windows 7 should ease some of your pain.

Overall, this is quite possibly the best version of Windows that Microsoft has ever produced. It’s very clean, well organized and easy to work with.

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