While some tech pundits are saying 7 isn’t really all that differentfrom Vista — and indeed, one of the attractions for Vista users is that7 can generally use the same drivers and run the same apps as Vista —the consensus among anti-Vista folks I know who’ve tried the 7 betaseems to be that the new operating system is “Vista done right.”

Here’s why I think you’ll see many of the XP diehards happily embracing Windows 7 when it’s released.

1: UAC has mellowed out

User Account Control in Vista is like living with an overprotectivemother — when you’re 30. It’s constantly popping up to warn you ofimpending danger, even when you’re just trying to take a look at DeviceManager or perform some other innocent task. It hovers over you andnags you constantly: “Are you sure you want to do that?” LikeMom, UAC has our best interests in mind, but it can drive you nuts inthe name of “security” — especially when you consider that it doesn’treally define a security boundary. (For more on that, see MarkRussinovich’s TechNet Magazine article “Inside Windows Vista User Account Control.”

Windows 7 doesn’t do away with UAC, but it does give users optionsregarding its behavior. By reducing the number of unnecessary andredundant UAC dialogs, making the prompts more informative, andproviding users with more control over UAC, Windows 7 maintains many ofthe benefits of the feature without intruding on users’ computing livesso much that they turn the whole thing off in frustration.

2: Explorer is no longer a pane in the behind

In a misguided attempt to alleviate the need for horizontalscrolling, Vista made the left navigation pane in Windows Explorer aconstantly moving target. As you move your mouse, it will automaticallyscroll back and forth. My husband calls this auto-scrolling feature the“whack a mole” phenomenon because of the way the contents of the paneseem to dodge back and forth.

You can avoid the auto-scrolling by dragging the pane to make itwide enough to accommodate the entire tree, but that isn’t a goodoption on a small screen, such as the one on my compact VAIO notebook.

In Windows 7, the navigation pane stays still, so you no longer risk getting seasick from all the swaying back and forth.

3: Graphics cards coexist peacefully once more

In XP, we could use pretty much whatever graphics cards we wantedfor multiple monitors. I had a machine with three cards installed: anNVidia, an ATI, and a Matrox. XP would stretch my desktop across allthree monitors attached to those cards. When I upgraded that machine toVista, I found that I no longer had multiple monitors. Some researchrevealed that to use multiple graphics cards, they would have to alluse the same driver. That meant I couldn’t use cards from differentvendors together. I had to shell out a few bucks to get more ATI cardsbefore I could use all my monitors again.

According to reports, Windows 7 has added support for multipleheterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors. Now this probablydoesn’t mean you can combine ATI and NVIDIA cards in anSLI-configuration, but it sounds as if we can have our multi-vendormulti-monitor setups back.

4: Clutter and bloat are reduced

Vista was perhaps the culmination of Microsoft’s efforts to be allthings to all users. Along with the built-in applications we got withXP, Vista added a contacts program, a calendaring program, a photoediting program, and so forth. While some users appreciate all thesefree applications, many others have been annoyed by the “extras” theydon’t need or use. If you’re planning to install Office with Outlook,there’s no need for Contacts and Calendar. And if you have your ownfavorite and more powerful graphics applications, such as PhotoShop,there’s no need for Photo Gallery. The extras just clutter up yourPrograms menu and take up space on the hard disk.

With Windows 7, Microsoft has removed a number of the extra programsand now offers them as free downloads from the Windows Live Web site.This way, those who want them can have them, and those who don’t won’thave to deal with removing them.

5: Boot performance is better

Another common complaint about Vista has been the inordinate amountof time it can take to boot up. This might not be an issue for thosewho leave their systems on all the time, but if you turn off yourcomputer every night, waiting around forever for it to get started inthe morning can turn into a major annoyance.

A Microsoft spokesperson indicated that the company’s goal forWindows 7 is a 15-second boot time, whereas three quarters of Vistausers report boot times of more than 30 seconds. Although the beta ofWin7 may not have achieved that 15-second mark yet for most users, themajority of beta testers I’m hearing from say it’s substantiallyquicker than Vista on the same hardware. That’s been my personalexperience, as well. Since it is still a beta, it’s not unrealistic to hope that continued tweaking will get that time down further before the final release.

6: Notifications can be fine-tuned

In XP and Vista, you can disable the balloon notifications in thesystem tray, but what if you’d like to continue to get notificationsfrom some applications but not from others? Windows 7 allowsyou to customize the behavior by simply clicking the little arrow nextto the tray and selecting Customize. In the dialog box, choose whichicons you want to appear in the tray. For each application, you canselect whether you want to display notifications or hide them, as shownin Figure A.

Figure A

Windows 7 gives you much more control over those notifications in the system tray.

7: Security messages are consolidated

In Vista, you have several security-related icons in the systemtray, and you might have notifications popping up from each one. Tomake changes to security settings, you may have to open severalapplications. In Windows 7, all the security messages have beenconsolidated into one icon. When you click it, you’ll see all messagesrelated to firewall, Windows Defender, Windows Update settings, and soforth, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

Windows 7 consolidates all security-related messages in one system tray icon.

By clicking the Open Action Center link in the message box, you canmake the changes that are recommended or (for example, in the casewhere you have an antivirus program installed but Windows doesn’trecognize it), you can select the option to turn off messages regardingthat application, as shown in Figure C.

Figure C

You can make changes or turn off particular security notifications in the Action Center.

8: Side-by-side windows auto-size

Most of the monitors sold today come in a wide aspect ratio that’sbetter for watching movies, which is also handy for displaying twodocuments side by side on the screen. With Vista, though, you have tomanually size those docs. Windows 7 has a cool new feature by which youcan drag windows to each side of the screen and they will automaticallysize themselves to each take up half the screen when you let go of thecursor.

Even better, if you drag the window back away from the edge, it goes back to the size it was before. How cool is that?

9: Home networking gets simple

For home users without a lot technical know-how, networking has beenmade simpler in Windows 7. A new feature called HomeGroup allows allWindows 7 computers on a network to share files, printers, and otherresources more easily. Thanks to Libraries (collections of certaintypes of files, such as music, photos, or documents), you can accessfiles anywhere on the HomeGroup network as if they were stored locally,and you can search across the whole HomeGroup.

Windows Media Player in Windows 7 can stream the music and videos onone PC in the network to another, and even play back songs from iTuneslibraries on other computers.

Connecting to a wireless network is also easier; now you can clickthe wi-fi icon in the system tray and select a network from the list,instead of opening up a separate dialog box to make the connection.

10: Taskbar preview really works

In Vista, you can hover over a taskbar button — for InternetExplorer, for example — and see that three instances of IE are open.You see the open pages stacked as shown in Figure D, but they’re so small that it’s difficult to really tell which page is which.

Figure D

The Vista taskbar preview gives you an idea of what your running application windows contain.

In Windows 7, the preview feature has been enhanced so that itbecomes an extremely useful function. Now when you hover over a taskbaricon, you get actual previews that are placed side by side and arelarge enough for you to identify (Figure E).

Figure E

In Windows 7, you can actually tell what’s in each of those preview windows.

And that’s not all. If you’re playing a video in one of the windows,that video plays in the preview window, too. And if you right-click theIE icon in the taskbar, you get a list of your IE history files, asshown in Figure F. You can just click any of those and go immediately to that page.

Figure F

Right-clicking the taskbar icon gives you more options; in the caseof IE, you can select from the history files, open a new instance ofthe browser, unpin the program, or close the window.

Thanks and Regards

Nishant Pofale
Cell:9822233689
Ph: 1-732-546-3803
www.softwaregenius.net




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