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15 Things You'll Love about Windows 7
Eric Dahl / Inside Tech
January 19, 2009
(and Five You’ll Hate)
Microsoft has a lot riding on Windows 7. Vista failed to give Windows users a reason to upgrade from XP, and justified or not, it quickly gained a reputation for being slow, overly complicated, and annoying to work with. Judging by the response to the public beta of Windows 7, lots of Windows fans are more than ready for an OS that delivers what Vista promised and more.
So is Windows 7 that OS? I installed a copy of the public beta on my home machine – a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo machine with 4GB of RAM, a GeForce 7950GT, and a Seagate 1.5TB hard drive. Once I’d burned a copy of the 3.15GB ISO file, I grabbed an old SATA drive and performed a clean install of the beta.
What I found was by far the most stable beta OS I’ve ever tested. Windows 7 is an impressively polished, if not particularly ambitious piece of work. Having lived with the OS for a little while now, I can tell you that Windows 7 definitely offers a few things to get excited about.
I’ve picked out 15 new features I think you’ll like as well as five that you probably won’t. Read on to check them out, or head over to the new Windows 7 Beta gallery for lots of screens from the installation process.
15 Things You’ll Like About Windows 7
msburnette
4 months ago
4 comments
I am still running Vista Ultimate and I love it. Once you got past all the start up teething troubles, it has been a good solid OS. Every OS has teething troubles when it starts, Vista's were just blown out of proportion in this "I want it now and I want it perfect" mindset that now pervades the 21st century.
mrmeRobert
6 months ago
4 comments
um xp is still the way to go with me
silly4e
7 months ago
4 comments
it is a compost of win xp and vista minus the securty annoince. i have it to wated till the came out with some thing elce besides vista. you don't know how maney i had to fix with vista. every one would get mad and turn t he securty off and i would have to repair it do to some kind of trogenand ect. you i am happy with my amd quad core with 8 gb ram t1 hard drive with win 7 no problems yet .
kwickenb
9 months ago
60 comments
I pre ordered it before the release date so as to save $100 on the cost. I am not ready to upgrade to it just now. XP works "OK" by me. If I upgraded there would be a lot of software to reinstall on Win7 some of which may not work under Win7. Some of the stuff goes back to Win98 but still runs "ok" on XP. Then there is virtual XP mode in Win7 but my hardware does not support it. Wintell did a disservice by not disclosing what hardware would run virtual XP. Some do and some don't. It's a royal pain to find out that you can't on existing hardware and then the newest PC's don't disclose that either. How can you tell at a glance with out needing an advanced degree in Computer Science and a lot of technical acumen to find out. You would think the PC manufactures would toot this about their PC's. It has been discussed a few places but not widely disclosed that a given PC can run virtual mode.
mkdigital
11 months ago
4 comments
I can't wait to get it! Even most of your bad points are sellers for me. I need a change of scenery but I still want my computer to be fast. I can't wait to test it out!
BeckoningChasm
11 months ago
2 comments
I dunno. A lot of what's outlined in this article seems to be fluff, honestly. What I want is a more responsive OS so that a netbook with a fixed amount of RAM (1 or 2 gigs) will actually be usable, rather than a frustration. With all the emphasis on graphics (transparence, rotating, etc) it doesn't seem like this is much of an improvement on Vista.
bobcohenc
11 months ago
4 comments
I have been using the Windows 7 RC for a while now and I have found that in 95% of the cases it out does Vista and XP hands down. I have found a few software incompatibilities of programs that I had used on a regular basis with XP but I am hoping that they will have an upgrade soon as they are important for me. If Windows 7 could be completely backward compatible without going through setting up profiles, that would be great.
evans
about 1 year ago
4 comments
I still like to try it but because of the drivers being new, it myt go for an extreemly amount of money and myt be abit hard to sell to individuals. Lets see though..
evans
about 1 year ago
4 comments
Am in Kenya and if its possible would like to give the OS a try am highly interested in Os's and have basic knowledge of Windows, Mac & Linux Based Ubuntu. It will be interesting to see how it performs here in my country. So far from the Likes, it looks a good investment. Let see what the dislikes are..
pratikf
about 1 year ago
36 comments
No matter how nice an OS Microsoft will build, people will always find a way to complain. I loved Vista, I love Win 7 even more! I'm already looking for a tablet... ;)
alicat2_
about 1 year ago
2 comments
I already have my files organized like a filing cabinet, as this is the most efficient way of doing things. I DO NOT NEED A LIBRARY.
lpenny
over 1 year ago
2 comments
OK all the pretty is really cool. I also like the jump to thing for opening familiar files. And IE 8 highlight to bring up a map etc. is nice. You can do that now with Ubiquity, it's still cool though. I think my biggest worry is How much memory does it require to do all these things and is it stable!!
deanmyrick
over 1 year ago
38 comments
It seems like they are always about 5 years (or more) behind the mac OS. The new control bar aka dock, making open windows transparent aka Spaces and just always trying to make it more mac-like. Guys and girls! Here's a clue: Why not get the real thing instead of a really crappy attempted copy of it. For example, if I wanted a volkswagen, I wouldn't buy a car that is "volkswagen-like". I'd get a Volkswagen!
money
over 1 year ago
74 comments
I love the new windows 7. You need the Virtual PC pak to go with it! That way everything will run correctly. Also the new Virtual PC has USB options, in which other Virtual PC's do not.. I think it was more responceive than vista.
Gusmackey
over 1 year ago
14 comments
WEll, let me weigh in as well, I tried the beta on an older machine( which is what MS should have focused on becuase a large number of the home users will be upgrades) and it did not like the older hardware nor could I get some of the Windows XP or vista drivers to work. MS is in for a big surprise when they find they encounter the same issue as with Vista, people will buy it and go back to XP because of the issues was older software and applications. Now to the 64bit, ask HP why their 64bit computers are not selling ( hint!! application compatibility, vendors are not buying it). So it's great that you can runmore RAM with the 64bit, but what good is it when yu cannot run the apps you need and use. Good Luck MS!!!