this week i made the update from windows vista to windows 7 on the work laptop and overall it does seem pretty good. who'd have thought windows vista could have been improved upon! i should note that i did the update option as opposed to a complete reformat, 'cause i'm lazy like that. the update process took about 4-5 hours but overall there seems to be a pretty good speed increase in booting up and shutting down (which kinda is expected as vista is pretty much the slowest operating system there is).
i've been using it now for a few days and it does seem a definite improvement (again not difficult coming from vista). since buying a macbook (for home) i'm pretty converted to mac os x and given the choice i'd much rather be running that, but from what i've seen it looked pretty complicated to get it installed on most normal pc's and i'm just not that bored enough to get into it that much. so for the time being windows 7 will have todo.
so being a mac user i do like the new windows 7 taskbar 'cause microsoft being microsoft has attempted to copy the mac os x dock. the new windows taskbar takes up much less space and just looks alot nicer. one feature that seems to have been left out is stacks (a mac os x feature) that allows folders placed in the dock to be opened so you can access more from one icon on your dock. there seem to be a few apps out there to get around this and the one i'm trying out is called standalonestack2 (catchy name i know). it's compatible with windows xp, vista and 7 so may be something you wanna check out anyway. for more info and to see it in action check this out. another cool thing i noticed about the new taskbar is when your copying files it shows the progress bar in the background of the icon. so you can see when your files are done copying without having to minimise everything else.
another slightly changed feature is the "gadgets". basically they are little things you can add to your desktop to get in the way (like a clock, calendar, local weather, news headlines, etc). in windows vista these were limited to the left or right side of your screen but now you can just throw these anywhere on your desktop. it's a useful feature to have if you actually use them but still doesn't compare to the infinitely better mac os x dashboard.
another "big" feature added to windows 7 is the resizing of windows. if you want to compare two websites side-by-side you can just drag the window to the far left or right of the screen and it'll resize it to fit half the screen. once your done you just drag them back and they return to their previous size. kinda cool i guess.
given the few days i've been using windows 7 these seem to be the most noticeable and stand out features - so far anyway. i'm sure/hope there's more under the hood but it definitely seems a worthy update from vista (but then so was windows xp...). it really should be a free upgrade from vista but any way microsoft can make more money they will, and if they can confuse people with all their stupid different versions at the same time all the better. seriously, is anyone gunna make sense of this:
but i guess for the time being this is a free and worthy update from vista so i'd recommend doing it (especially if your already on vista, but maybe if your on xp too and fancy a change). obviously backup your shit first - just incase.
now here's a quick video on microsoft's innovation in windows vista :)
