You may have seen the all the brilliant people in the television adverts who helped make Windows 7, you may have even participated in a windows 7 party (yes these were and are real), and the technically hungry among you may have already asked us to hook you up!
Windows 7 is finally here and its release has been the hottest topic on the Web with everyone wanting to know more about it. For those that havn’t seen the adverts see below for some of the industry reviews of Windows 7:
BBC News Rick Munday - "Multi touch and touch control is now integrated into the operating system....now you can control the whole the entire operating system by touch....touch is an evolution"
BBC News Jason Palmer - "It looks a lot like vista and even sounds like vista, The tabs bar is very very handy you can move the icons about....best of all when you right click on each of the icons you get a sort of contacts lists, explorer you get most visited sites, windows you get recent documents."
CNET Ina Fried - Ina reports that even her great aunt at the age of 92 took no time at all to adjust to windows 7 and even text Ina to say "it really is not very different from the XP I used before"
Independent.co.uk - "Microsoft has got Windows 7 right to the point where it unobtrusively lets you get on with the job at hand"
Here at CCS we have been trailing Windows 7 for a little while and have found that we like the new Windows 7 user interface very much, but it is different. The learning curve will be relatively minor for people familiar with Vista, but much steeper for folks still using XP which means you and your employees may have to spend time learning it before you become really efficient and productive.
The first thing you'll notice about Windows 7 is its lighter system footprint makes for faster start-up and slightly faster performance. The initial visual makeover is instantly apparent too with all of its flash graphics and luxury features which point to it being a distant relative of Vista. However, it works much better than Vista, and most of Vista's annoyances have either been removed, or can be changed so the system works the way you like. Windows 7 includes all the features that were promised, wrapped up in an interface that makes them easy to find and use.
Things we liked -
- Windows 7 comes with a snazzy new taskbar that makes finding and using windows, tabs, and programs much easier.
- Window management features - You can throw windows against the side of the screen to make them take up exactly half the screen. Pull two windows to opposite sides to compare and read two documents in a snap. The windows revert back to their original sizes when you pull them away from the edges of the screen. Additionally, you can shake one window side-to-side to quickly minimize everything else on the screen.
- Browsing between programs feature- Just by hovering over the icons in the quick launch/tool bar results in the screen coming up; move away and it vanishes. This click-free interaction is perfect if, for example, you are writing up something and you need to keep referring to a web page.
- Another big innovation is the highly anticipated touch screen technology, which Windows 7 supports as part of its software. While the widespread usage of touch screen monitors is years off, Microsoft have acknowledged that keyboards and mice are dying breeds.
After trailing the product we have come to the conclusion that Windows 7 is surly going to take the world by storm, and although early adopters may run into issues in the nearly 5 months we have tested it we have run into very limited problems. We would be happy to advise our customers, but unless there is specific need to use Windows XP we would suggest using Windows 7.
Windows 7 review Links:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=106237
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/22/windows-7-review
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/software/operating-systems/microsoft-windows-7-622923/review
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2348899,00.asp
http://www.pcmag.com/Windows_7/ 