Windows 7 Review: Do We Finally Have a Successor to XP?

I am not a big fan of Windows Vista. I had been a Vista user from February 7 to May 5, 2009, the day that Windows 7 RC came out for consumption by the public. I hope that this review will enlighten you and you can make your own decision regarding the upgrade to Windows 7.

The first thing that you notice when you turn on a Windows 7 machine is that the boot up sequence is faster than windows Vista, in fact I took the liberty of timing my machine a while back and found that when I made the upgrade to Windows 7 I was afforded a 20% speedup in startup time on a cold-boot. This is the first of many speed and organization improvements in Windows 7.

When the home screen loads you will see a new gadget taskbar as well as a taller/wider windows taskbar on the bottom of your screen. At first I did not like the bulky feeling of the new taskbar, but as soon as you start your first program, you will see that it is well worth it. Let's say you have multiple internet explorer windows open, you can simply roll your mouse over the IE icon on the taskbar to see a thumbnail preview of each of your screens, you may say "So what" I could do this on windows Vista, well the new portion of this is that you can roll your mouse over each of the preview images to reveal a full screen version of the content you are previewing. I found that this helped organize the desktop and make it much friendlier to someone like me- who has multiple windows open at all times. No longer do I have to blindly alt-tab until I get to my desired window, this feature makes it painless.

The next cool enhancement with the toolbar is that you can "pin" any program you wish to it, and it will never leave. Whether you have the program open or closed, it will always reside on the bottom of your screen for easy access. For those of you that are familiar with the Mac OS, this is very similar to the dock system that apple enjoys. Another new development in the taskbar is an expanded right-click menu. Microsoft calls this a "Jump List". For instance, if you right click on windows media player you will find a list of your most frequently played albums, a button to play all media shuffled and the usual close button. If you right click on internet explorer in the task bar, you can find a list of your most frequently visited websites for easy access.

Now let's move on to the new start menu search. When you clock on the windows icon you fill find a search bar there to greet you among the other usual suspects such as control panel, shut down, etc. This new search bar is much more powerful then the search functionality of yesteryear. As soon as you begin typing results start to come up that are actually relevant to your search. Easily sorted into different archetypes such as: programs, music, pictures. It is truly easy to find anything you are looking for.

The age-old problem of drivers and windows does not escape us when we move up to Windows 7; however it does become a lot simpler. I have grown into the habit of simply plugging in hardware to my PC and having it work in a couple of minutes without the pains of searching the Internet for drivers or finding my old hardware CD. You will need an active Internet connection for this feature, but I found that all of my hardware easily worked on the Windows 7 operating system.

The one thing that I do wish to paint in a negative light is Internet explorer 8, which ships with Windows 7. I do not feel that Microsoft has caught up to the likes of safari and Firefox with this release of Internet explorer. It still feels bogged down compared to the other browsers, and since most malicious software targets Internet explorer anyway, I would recommend immediately downloading Firefox and ignoring windows explorer 8 at all costs.

Overall the look and feel of Windows 7 is very similar to Vista, so do not fear having to relearn too much or feel uncomfortable with upgrading. For me, the list of features I described above would not suffice in order to be called a significant upgrade, but the addition of the speed-boost I experienced on nearly all applications I would upgrade if at all possible. In addition, I think it is safe to upgrade from windows XP if you have a decent graphics card (256MB or above should suffice).