Windows 7 arrives: The time is finally ripe

Nearly three years after the debut of the botched Windows Vista, enough is right with Windows 7 to unseat an aging Windows XP

By Randall C. Kennedy | InfoWorld

If you are wondering what reasons you should think about to decide if you should move up in equipment and into the soon to be released Windows 7 operating system, read this article. Infoworld’s Randall Kennedy wrote a great piece describing the history of Windows 7, its XP and Vista beginnings, and how its new interface and functionality can benefit you in your computing experience.

Some key features that I find extremely useful:

• Search Field – The integrated search field in explorer windows and in the Start Menu is fast and extremely useful. Whether you are looking for a document, email, note or a program, just start typing some key words to search on and see what pops up. I use this feature to pull up programs that I don’t use often so don’t have on my taskbar. Once you get used to using it you will never want to go back.
• Explorer Window Breadcrumbs – we have seen this advancement in many programs. This is another one of those things that once you begin using it you don’t want to lose it, and if it is not part of a program you get angry because it is such a useful function. Each of the arrows above points to a point on the bar that I can click on to go back instantly to that folder level. Simple, fast and easy, just what we want. The points build as I am clicking into each folder so it is laying the crumbs for be to be able to follow back from whence I came from.
• Taskbar and Aero Glass – one of the Aero Glass features that has been better utilized is on the Taskbar. As you are sliding across the icons on your Taskbar you will see a representation of the applications that are currently running in each application program. Take a look at the video below to see how this works.

• Pinning – we have seen the concept of pinning items to your Start Menu before but now you are able to do this same thing with Taskbar. Simply right click on an start menu application icon and you have the choice to pin it to your taskbar. Now you have single click access to your favorite programs.This is not limited to just programs, you  can pin documents and other utilities to the Taskbar as well. In XP I made extreme use of the Quick Launch bar, this feature puts this kind of function on steroids.

One of the things that we have seen is the increase in speed when accessing some of our older applications, even over XP. Now we are attributing this to the way Windows 7 as changed the way it accesses database structure from a server but in reality all we know is that it runs like a speed demon. The tests performed by InfoWorld Labs showed greater memory use and slower speeds when compared to XP and slightly overall performance over the current releases of Vista. But in most cases, you will not be putting this program on your older equipment but moving it onto new equipment as you are refreshing. Microsoft in all their meetings with us has stated that you really want to run this program in 64-bit mode and take advantage of how inexpensive memory has become. So if you are configuring a system, don’t skimp on RAM.

Hardware compatibility – having been built from the Vista kernel, Windows 7 doesn’t have the lack of hardware drivers that gave Vista such a black eye when it first came out. Two years after Vista’s initial release hardware vendors have caught up with drives that support both Vista and Windows 7 quite adequately. In one of my previous articles I mentioned how when installing Windows 7 on my Netbook I didn’t have to go out and search for a single driver to get all of the hardware components functioning. It was great. So this is now pretty much a non-issue.

Third Party Application Compatibility – Microsoft has finally recognized that Windows XP is still the Gold Standard for application compatibility and stability. While we saw many programs failing in the Vista environment, Windows 7’s application support has been much improved. Windows 7 key is VXP or Virtual Windows XP Mode which provides a virtualized WXP image for running applications in their native environment. So if an application doesn’t work right in XP compatibility mode then you can virtualize it. “Still, VXP is compelling in that it provides a fully licensed copy of Windows XP that you can run alongside your Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate license. And it's free.”

Going back to hardware. With the new norm in systems being multi-core (dual and quad for now and more coming down the road) and much larger standard memory configurations, you will want in employ an operating system that uses the these and many more hardware configurations. Windows 7 takes advantage of multi-core systems better than XP with its base architecture. You will be better leveraged for the future applications taking full advantage of these capabilities.

We all loved XP but once you begin to work with Windows 7 I think you will be won over.