Windows 7 in review

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By Philip DiStefano

This is it - Windows 7's release date is upon us. It is officially slated for public launch tomorrow, October 22, though it has been available to students with MSDN Academic Alliance access for about two months, and has also been on TigerWare for about two weeks - both of which are free options for LSU students and faculty.

Windows 7 is the follow-up to Microsoft's last operating system release, Windows Vista, which wasn't quite accepted with open arms by consumers. Though there was nothing technically wrong with Vista, consumers were resistant to the switch. Microsoft dropped the name "Vista" in their advertising, and instead started focusing on the positive aspects of owning a PC.

Well, that's likely all about to change. Windows 7 is here, and the consensus is that it's good - very good. What's the kicker? Windows 7's underpinnings are almost exactly like Windows Vista's. It's just further proof that the people who hated Vista didn't even know why they hated it.

So what's different? Multitasking in Windows 7 is hugely improved, thanks to the new taskbar. Just hover over an application's taskbar icon and a thumbnail of all of the instances of that application will appear. Hover over the thumbnail to make all other windows invisible except for the selected one, or click on a thumbnail to switch to that window. Right click on taskbar application icons to activate jump lists - useful lists of things you might want to do relating to that app.

Want to maximize a window? Then you'll love Aero snap. Just grab the menu bar on a window and throw it to the top of the screen. Want to tile your window vertically? Grab the menu bar and throw it to a side of the screen. Want to get rid of all but one window? Aero shake is for you! Grab a window's menu bar and start shaking it and all other windows will minimize. Shake again to restore.

Even with features aside, the Aero glass effects in Windows 7 are prettier than ever. If you manually resize a window to the top or bottom of a screen, a sparkle splashes around your mouse pointer and the window will automatically stretch vertically to fill the screen.

Windows 7 also supports trim - a function that will make solid state disk drives operate much more efficiently. There's a ton of other technical modifications, but that is one of the more interesting ones, as it will likely affect every person reading this at one point or another in the future when solid state drives are the norm.

Final verdict - Windows 7 is extraordinary. The best improvement is definitely the taskbar and its extensive enhancements to multitasking. The least impressive new feature is the added granularity to User Account Control (either turn it off completely and risk security or just leave it alone - the different levels are unnecessary). Quite simply, if you don't upgrade, you will be missing out. For users that loved Vista, you'll love 7. For users that loved XP, prepare to be surprised. Windows 7 definitely lives up to the hype.

Originally Published: Issue 820 - October 21, 2009

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