Windows 7 - What You Need to Know

It took Microsoft over six years to get Windows Vista out the door after its release of the phenomenally successful Windows XP. However, with the release of its first beta, Microsoft is getting closer to the launch of Vista's follow-up called Windows 7.

Windows Vista has proven to be one of the company's most unpopular operating systems - you could even argue more unpopular than Windows Me - and Microsoft's simplified name change suggests it's trying to distance itself from Vista and not plant too many expectations in people's minds.

It recently released the first public beta of the new Windows 7 operating system to the Internet, so I took it for a spin to see what it has on offer and give you an idea where Microsoft is heading.

Vista Look And Feel

In basic terms, Windows 7 has the look and feel of Windows Vista. You still have the Start Orb and the same window control icons (the big red X at the top right of your applications). However, while it has much in common with Vista (enough for some to suggest Windows 7 is just a glorified Vista service pack), there are some notable changes - some of these are improvements; others you can judge yourself.

User Account Control

One of the worst features in Vista was the draconian User Account Control (UAC), which blurted out 'Cancel or Allow' seemingly every time you tried to do anything in Windows. And to turn it off, you needed to reboot your PC.

Unfortunately, UAC is present in Windows 7, but the way its implemented is much smarter. Instead of just on or off, Windows 7 gives you four levels of control on how UAC works, which progressively give you more control (and less warnings) about what's happening in your PC.

However, the really nice change is that it no longer requires you to reboot to change the UAC setting.

Windows Taskbar

Microsoft has also changed the way the taskbar (that's the information panel at the bottom of the screen that displays currently open applications and other info) works. Instead of having a series of fixed icons plus large open-application bars that we've seen since Windows 95, Microsoft has changed it to work similarly to the Mac OS X dock. When you open up an application, it simply loads an icon onto the taskbar. Right-clicking on the icon gives you the option of either pinning it to the taskbar, or turning it into a quick-launch icon.

This is now the default mode for the taskbar, but thankfully you can change it back to the familiar Windows XP style if you prefer.

Right-Click

One way to get a quick feel for the differences between Windows 7 and Vista is to right-click your mouse. There are numerous changes to the context-driven menus (the boxes that pop up with a series of action options when you right-click). For example, rather than having to dig through a series of menus to change the screen resolution, you can simply right-click on the Windows desktop and choose Change Resolution. You then get a new window with details of your monitor as well as supported resolution settings. Take your pick, click Apply and Windows does the rest.

Another useful feature that also quietly makes an appearance in Windows 7 is a context-sensitive command-prompt launcher. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to any folder, hold the shift key down and right-click your mouse. You should see an 'Open Command Prompt Here' menu entry that, if clicked, will produce a command-line prompt at the current folder location.

Application Performance

Another major complaint with Vista was its demand for memory. If you're trying to run Windows Vista with less than 2G of memory, you'll be struggling to get anywhere near your PCs best performance. It will process commands at nearly full speed, but opening up applications would take extra time with insufficient money memory.

However, it looks as though Microsoft has improved the memory requirements. I loaded Windows 7 Beta 1 onto a 2.6Ghz Pentium 4 desktop PC with 768M of memory. I then checked the resource allocation with Windows 7 just sitting at the desktop and it was only using 470M of memory. The same test with Windows Vista Ultimate on a 3GHz Pentium 4 desktop PC with 2G of memory saw 940M of memory being used.

Whether I can say Windows 7 is faster than Windows Vista is difficult, because this is only an early beta and no doubt there will be changes made between now and when the final version goes on sale.

Even if it's not faster, the lower memory requirements will make it a likely replacement for Windows XP on Notebook computers.

Built-In Applications

When Microsoft released Windows Office 2007, it came with a new ribbon interface that changed the typical way office applications showed menus and control icons. There were some consumers who didn't mind the change, but most did.

Now, for better or worse, the company has begun bringing some of these changes to the basic applications that come with Windows 7 such as Paint and WordPad.

They do come with other enhancements as well, but if you're not familiar with the ribbon-style interface, it will take you some time to get used to.

We won't see Windows 7 before the end of the year at the very earliest, but as the scaffolding comes down and the paint starts to dry, I'm sure there'll be huge improvements from Vista and we'll see it become the new XP.