The Arrival Of Windows 7

 The Arrival Of Windows 7

Finally the arrival of the much anticipated operating system, Windows 7. Although Vista received some of the harshest criticism in years, for Microsoft, it was still hugely successful, with an extreme overpriced tag, and a large range of features, it kept the fanboys happy. It's biggest flaw, was that it consumed so much system memory, that you needed a beastly machine just to properly run it, and even then, it consumed so much of your RAM, that many wondered was it even worth it. The question now remains, what can Windows 7 do for you? It brags about extremely efficiency in running it's OS, promises to deliver some of the most innovative features on the market today, and guarantees satisfaction with a fair price range. Let's take a look at Windows 7
According to Microsoft, Windows 7 is "all about simplicity". Although there have been eleven official releases of a Windows OS, this is marked as "Windows 7", and it promises reliability. One of the first things most of you notice about 7, is it's amazing taskbar, and how it functions. Instead of dividing up various web browser pages for example, a single icon appears, and by clicking it, a pop out window of the multiple tabs or windows, then appears. Yes, Mac has done something similar, but the look and feel to this on 7, is just unmatchable.

Again there is thumbnail previews of all of the applications that you have running, and what they consider as a "jump list" for directly reaching the most often used feature, of the running apps. Not only is this extremely convenient, but it's beneficial to those whom multitask such as myself. This is great, because for those of you like me, I have at least seven applications constantly running, ten to twenty open web pages or tabs, and also various programs I use nonstop.

Again, they've released multiple editions of this operating system, this time though, it's Starter, Home Premium, Professional, and of course the behemoth known as Ultimate. As in with Vista to experience the majority of the features you needed Premium, this time it's recommended you grab at least Professional, but in my earnest opinion, if you're going to fork out the cash for Pro, you might as well grab Ultimate.

Windows 7 also brings out the new "Windows Touch", for those of you with "touch" hardware. This would make the first operating system to fully integrate the touch devices with all of the capabilities of the operating system. It's pretty cool if you have the right tools to use it, although I still prefer my "old school" mouse and keyboard, for maximum efficiency and reduced time completing a project.

To upgrade to 7 is very easy if you're running Vista already, and your reward for it is an extremely fast and innovative operating system. The upgrade process takes a bit of time though, even on the fastest of machines. I have a powerhouse machine and it was at least three hours, and since I was asleep through the rest of the process, I cannot say the exact length.

However, if you're still on XP, then expect a difficult upgrade. You must first back up all your files, documents, media, and settings, using a new tool for this called "Easy Transfer", and they recommend you do so to an external drive. Then you must do a fresh install of 7, and of course restore and reinstall of your apps, programs, and setting. This can be a bit time consuming not to mention frustrating, but I can assure you, the benefits are well worth the time. Just make sure you have a free weekend to sit down and complete this uphill task.

Although Microsoft has claimed they will continue to provide security updates for XP until 2014, waiting too long to grab this new operating system only delays the inevitable. Just make sure you visit Microsoft's website first, to make sure your machine is capable of the upgrade. It's way more efficient than Vista could ever possibly be, so if you can run Vista, you can run 7 with relative ease. Also in this modern digital age, even if you forget to back up some of those drivers of utter importance, it's not very hard to find them on the web. Unless in fact you forgot to back up the drivers for your network card, which would be a hassle indeed.

The Start menu itself is invigorating, and refreshing. The ease of which you can access your favorite files is astounding. The sheer beauty of it, and browsing through it for the first time, is an experience to remember. I highly enjoyed just admiring the bitter sweet essence of the Start menu. Windows 7 feels like the completion of what Vista should have been, a deeply thought out, and user input based operating system. Almost as if Vista was a test, to see what needed to be including, if only that were true.

Now, where Vista could take up to fifteen minutes to boot up, and have everything running smoothly, even on a fast PC, 7 is a huge triumph over this. If you run a clean install, and start up 7, wow, it's has a Mac OS X boot time, which is impressive. Shut down time as well, is also fast compared to Vista. This is a very lightweight and jam packed operating system indeed.

Although it has almost exactly the same hardware requirements, I've seen people actually try to run Vista with only 512mb of RAM, although it was highly laggy, and at times would make someone such as me who is active and busy on the PC, want to throw my tower out the window, no pun intended. So running 7 on a slower machine, if you had ran Vista on it, would not be a problem what so ever. It's as if they took a mad scientist, Vista, and Bill Gates, and zipped them into a compressed file for three years, and this is the end result. Highly worthy of the Windows name.

Now with 7, if you meet the "Aero" requirements, there is also a new feature, called "Aero Peek", which allows fully translucent windows, for those whom have thirty windows open at once. Yes in Vista you could used "transparent" windows with Aero, but, this is fully translucent windows, capable of an extraordinary visual experience that even the those whom are unimpressed by art can respect. That's what the new look or Aero is, a modern masterpiece, a work of art.

The rapid navigation of the taskbar apps, the translucent Aero features, the innovative designs, are not all it has to offer. They now introduce "Aero Shake", which means this, you can literally grab with the pointer, the titlebar of a window, and shake it around, which will minimize all of the windows you have open. This is very cool, and you'll find yourself doing it often. So for those of you counter-intelligence agents who have classified documents open when a co-worker walks in, just shake the title bar, and poof, its all gone. Or for those of you looking at multiple porn pages and the wife walks in, just shake that title bar with one hand, and uh, hide yourself with the other.

The search function on 7 is also a innovative, where as soon as your typing into it, results begin popping instantly, and I know search is not new, but this search is faster, extremely faster. Mac OS X has something similar, with Spotlight, but Mac OS X is a huge slowdown compared to this, trust me.

Now, to your media. Windows Media Player has always been a key built in feature of all Windows operating systems, but now, they've added a comprehensive codec support. WMP now supports most all codecs, as well as removing the old direct show codecs, and implementing a new replacement, called Media Foundation. While it's a bit confusing at first, especially if you're doing the tasks of encoding, or something along those lines, it has a very huge potential to become something great. Again, it's new, and it will take some time for everyone to get used to so say the least. For those of you that must know about this main task before making the switch, I suggest you visit HERE for a comprehensive look at Media Foundation.

Something else that is really neat is now you can directly tie your media library in with your Windows Live ID, and pull up all your songs, movies, and more, from any computer that has internet access. This is great, so instead of carrying around a flash drive, or external hard drive, you can simply sign into your Windows Live ID from a friend's house, or your work place, and access all of your media, boom, just like that. A smooth idea indeed for Microsoft. I think this is one more thing to booster their battle with the new "Bing" engine and features to compete with Google, but that's another topic.

When it comes to the Windows Explorer, it's still effective as always, but without being able to put my finger on why it's better, I would suggest that it's "smarter". Now while exploring your windows and folders, you can turn on or off the "preview" pane, which shows say for example, the album cover, or movie cover, etc. Also you can now preview and play songs directly from within a folder, or other media files. It's all very interesting.

Another nice trick to the explorer and preview windows, is that for example, you can plug in a pink iPod, and when installing the drivers and after, it will show the exact model of the phone, the exact "stock" color of any device, and it's interesting. So it's just one more thing for your eyes to admire, or something you can show off to your friends, its really useless other than that, but none the less, very cool.

On to Internet Explorer. IE8 comes standard in this OS, although I would not recommend using it. I never use Internet Explorer, for many reasons. First major reason, is it has huge security flaws, even though it's overly protected. What I mean by this, as some of you may know, is IE is tied in with windows explorer, and what that means, is if for example, you were hijacked, while using Internet Explorer, they have access to your windows explorer, which is extremely dangerous. I avoid IE at all costs, use FireFox, it's much faster, has many more features, and is just all around a better browser. Even Chrome is better than IE, hell even Safari or Opera, just stay away from IE. The only time you should ever use IE is on a newly installed OS, to download and install FireFox lol. Moving on.

The security aspect of 7 cannot really be determined as of yet, seeing how it's so new. Wait a few months until hackers have had a serious go at it, before we can determine how secure it is. Again as always, get a good protection software or a malware app, and you should be straight. What is nice, is that the newly included "HomeGroup" feature of networking, allows you to easily change the security standards and settings of each of the new "HomeGroups".

For years networking a connection between PC's has always been somewhat of a hassle on all Windows OS's, but now, with "HomeGroup", it is visually exciting and not at all challenging to network or link your machines, and can be done quickly as I said with relative ease. This is a plus for sharing files or folders, or connecting your Windows Media Center to the Xbox 360 for example. This is all easy to setup, and convenient with the new interface that's provided.

To compatibility with other products, such as printers, scanners, fax machines, etc, it shouldn't be much of a problem. Since this OS was designed amongst the Vista core, almost all of the fixes, patches, and bugs were worked out in the later Vista service packs. So no worries on that front. Now of course if you have a twenty year old printer, you might have a problem, but if not, everything should be as smooth as a baby's bottom. The Device Manager makes its return again, and it's still easy to use.

Regardless of the complaints about Vista and how certain hardware wouldn't work with it, that's just flat out crazy talk. Microsoft still allows use with more hardware and drives from more vendors and companies than any other operating system, and that's a fact. There is always going to be more products that will work with a Windows OS than any other operating system, and due to the relatively cheap prices for newer devices, you shouldn't have a problem finding what you need even if your stone-age device will not work with it.

The stability and speed of Windows 7 is what keeps it in the headlines as much as it has, and what keeps the Mac commercials attacking it, because they do feel threatened by it. Machines that would be almost not usable under Vista, can become a workhorse under Windows 7. This OS has performance, and performance is in high demand. Microsoft has reworked the GUI scheduling which in return means that there will be far less unresponsive times and also much more free CPU for you to work with.

If in fact you're on an older machine, and experience any slowdowns, they've included the "Startup Repair Utility", which manages the issues and works out the kinks, and if it cannot, it will find a restore point, and you can go from there.

On pricing, I'm not sure whether you can purchase Starter in the stores, or if it's just to be included on some uber cheap netbooks, but I know that home premium has a Full Price of $199.99, and an upgrade from Vista is $119.99. Professional, is $299.99 with an upgrade from Vista is only $199.99. Ultimate however, is a whopping $319.99 and with an upgrade from Vista can be found at $219.99. Or you can just download the torrent, which I'll be linking you to at the end of my well written review of Windows 7.

What's also interesting, is that Microsoft has said that it will continue to offer security updates as well as Windows Updates, to even "bootleg" copies of Windows 7. I guess they feel that in order to get the word out, and to get the fans behind them, that it's a necessity to have the updates and fixes available to pirates. Or maybe it's because they'll be making so much money off of it, that they really don't care. Either way, they're supporting "unofficial" copies of 7 with updates, and that's a major announcement.

So overall, Windows 7 is an extreme upgrade from Vista, and even a challenge to the performance of XP. It slaughters Mac OS X with it's features and compatibility combined, and it's as always going to destroy the open source operating systems. This OS has so many advantages to previous operating systems, that if you meet the requirements for it, there is no reason you shouldn't be using it. It feels great, looks great, and runs great. I don't know what else you could ask for. I'm running it on a separate partition, and wow, I am impressed. Microsoft really did their job with this release, and it's an amazing operating system. If you can meet the requirements and use it, you definitely should at least check it out. Chances are you'll fall in love, I did.