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Laptopical Thoughts: Windows 7

Posted by Daniel Shain

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Between the leaks, the betas, the first Release Candidate, the leftover angst from frustrated Vista users, and the smug assurances from Apple, a lot of people are buzzing about the upcoming release of Windows 7. But is it really such a big deal?

I'll admit that I haven't tried out the RC yet - though it could probably run on my ancient laptop, which is spec'd out like a modern day netbook with a 1.7GHz CPU and 1GB RAM. I've been meaning to though, and in the meantime I've been doing some research and just asking around. As far as I can tell, Windows 7 is more or less what Windows Vista was supposed to be, but wasn't. Apple's OSX catching up to and surpassing XP reminds me of Firefox catching up to and surpassing IE6 - Windows XP and IE6 had been doing so well that Microsoft felt content to just kind of sit back on its haunches for a while, twiddling its thumbs and pretending to keep busy. The spectacular failure of two decent Microsoft products to be successful - and we're talking Windows Vista and IE7 here - must have come as quite a shock to the boys in Redmond.

They seem to mean business again though. From what I hear, IE8 has a lot to offer in competition with FF3, just like Windows 7 is a worthy competitor for OSX. It has taken a lesson from Apple and provided a few surprisingly simple and attractive graphical features (Aero Shake is my favorite, where you shake the menu bar of a window with your mouse and all the windows around it disappear. Shake it again and they return), but for the most part the hard work went into improving the overall user experience on what Apple has correctly pegged as a finicky OS (not that Apples aren't finicky too, in their own way). Have you ever thought to yourself, "Why can't Windows do this?" In a lot of cases, now it can. I know I've thought that about sliding icons around on the taskbar, for example, and in Windows 7 taskbar icons are larger, easier to use, and yes, maneuverable along the taskbar itself. Windows 7 has gone behind the scenes and made boot times faster, system requirements lower, and icons larger. You have to give Microsoft credit for taking their time, listening to users, and making some creative choices here.

But in the end, is it worth all the hype? Is it the next big thing? The answer is yes and no. Windows 7 is just Windows Vista the way it was supposed to be. It's the product of Microsoft designing something interesting again now that they have remembered that they have competition. And personally, I am looking forward to it. Are you?

Get the Windows 7 RC here.

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Comments

  • By: Anna W Jun 20, 2009 4:37 AM

    I cant wait for W7. I hope it will be much more stable than vista Regards Bookmaker

  • By: Mynvaleo May 28, 2009 6:26 AM

    I heard this last week and installed in my laptop looks pretty much good. great win 7 version has introduced at right time. https://www.mynvaleo.com/makemoney

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