Windows 7 semi in depth

I have been using Windows 7 for a few days now (See my initial review) and I have to say its pretty good. Everything I have tried to do has worked very easily. I like the natural flow of the system menus. It is clear to see that this time around Microsoft paid a lot of attention to the user experience. There are many Microsoft haters out there but I feel that if they would look at the operating system in an unbiased capacity they might actually be impressed.

Many reviews have heralded Windows 7 as the dawn of a new age in computing. While the operating system is good I don't know if I can truly agree with that. I still really like the OS however. When claiming the dawn of a new age I expect a little more...like...holograms coming from my monitor.

The biggest thing I am noticing with Windows 7, and Microsoft in a whole, is that this is an embattled company that is working very hard to retool their image. While as of yet I don't believe that they are truly threatened but it doesn't take much to see that if Microsoft had continued down the same path of assumed dominance they eventually would be taken over. With the attention to the user experience the new Windows is an embodiment of the "new" Microsoft.

If you are currently using Vista I would suggest sprinting to your nearest software merchandiser on October 22 to get Windows 7. If you are running XP you might choose to wait a little bit but do know that 7 is actually better than XP. More features, more bells and whistles, and the drastically updated back end to support it all.

Windows 7 Very First Impressions

I just finished installing Windows 7 and have been playing around with it for about 10 minutes. I just wanted to put my initial thoughts up.

I was very surprised to find that my external monitor was not displaying anything initially. With Vista's superb plug and play support(Vista never had this problem) I was surprised that Windows 7 didn't find my graphics card. A quick trip to Dell.com produced a working driver.

The most striking difference when 7 loads is the size of the task bar. Microsoft has made the task bar about twice as tall as in previous versions of windows. It still maintains the programs you currently have running but in a very different fashion. By default internet explorer is "pinned" to the task bar meaning it has an icon on the bar at all times. I clicked this icon but was surprised to find that a new icon representing my window did not appear. Under the new system the icon itself will open a new instance of the program and it serves as the icon to switch back and forth between running programs of that type. Therefore the task bar has somewhat of a Mac with the organization ability that Mac's are tremendously deficient on.

While the user interface maintains the same visual theme many of the options have been moved around. I find the menues to be much more fluid however it still takes a little bit of concentration to avoid searching for the buttons instead of just going with the nice flow that Windows gives its menu options.

So far I am happy with it although it can be a shock at first. When I get some more experience with the system I will try and post a more complete review.