Windows 7 PC reviews

It’s not a what-if scenario. Windows 7, set to arrive on new PCs and as a shrinkwrapped upgrade on October 22, has a minimalist feel and attempts to fix an­­noyances old and new. In contrast, Windows Vista offered a flashy new interface, but its poor performance, compatibility gotchas, and lack of compelling features made some folks regret upgrading and others refuse to leave Windows XP.

Windows 7 is hardly flawless. Some features feel unfinished; others won’t realize their potential without heavy lifting by third parties. And some long-standing annoyances remain intact. But overall, the final shipping version we test-drove appears to be the worthy successor to Windows XP that Vista never was.

We haven’t yet given Windows 7 an expert star rating, as we think that the definitive answer to an operating system’s value is impossible to guage until a significant number of people have used it for a significant length of time. However, we have tried and tested all aspects of Windows 7 in the most depth you’ll find anywhere. CLICK HERE FOR OUR EXPERT VERDICT ON WINDOWS 7.

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Windows 7 Interface: The New Taskmaster
The Windows experience occurs mainly in its Taskbar – especially in the Start menu and System Tray. Vista gave the Start menu a welcome redesign; in Windows 7, the Taskbar and the System Tray get a thorough makeover.

The new Taskbar replaces the old small icons and text labels for running apps with larger, unlabeled icons. If you can keep the icons straight, the new design painlessly reduces Taskbar clutter. If you don’t like it, you can shrink the icons and/or bring the labels back.

In the past, you could get one-click access to programs by dragging their icons to the Quick Launch toolbar. Windows 7 eliminates Quick Launch and folds its capabilities into the Taskbar. Drag an app’s icon from the Start menu or desktop to the Taskbar, and Windows will pin it there, so you can launch the program without rummaging around in the Start menu. You can also organise icons in the Taskbar by moving them to new positions.

To indicate that a particular application on the Taskbar is running, Windows draws a subtle box around its icon – so subtle, in fact, that figuring out whether the app is running can take a moment, especially if its icon sits between two icons for running apps.

In Windows Vista, hovering the mouse pointer over an application’s Taskbar icon produces a thumbnail window view known as a Live Preview. But when you have multiple windows open, you see only one preview at a time. Windows 7′s version of this feature is slicker and more efficient. Hover the pointer on an icon, and thumbnails of the app’s windows glide into position above the Taskbar, so you can quickly find the one you’re looking for. (The process would be even simpler if the thumbnails were larger and easier to decipher.)

Also new in Windows 7′s Taskbar is a feature called Jump Lists. These menus resemble the context-sensitive ones you get when you right-click within various Windows applications, except that you don’t have to be inside an app to use them. Internet Explorer 8′s Jump List, for example, lets you open the browser and load a fresh tab, initiate an InPrivate stealth browsing session, or go directly to any of eight frequently visited web pages. Non-Microsoft apps can offer Jump Lists, too, if their developers follow the guidelines for creating them.

Windows 7 PC reviews

Other Windows 7 interface adjustments are minor, yet so sensible that you may wonder why Windows didn’t include them all along. Shove a window into the left or right edge of the screen and it’ll expand to fill half of your desktop. Nudge another into the opposite edge of the screen, and it’ll expand to occupy the other half. That makes comparing two windows’ contents easy. If you nudge a window into the top of the screen, it will maximise to occupy all of the display’s real estate.

The extreme right edge of the Taskbar now sports a sort of nub; hover over it, and open windows become transparent, revealing the desktop below. (Microsoft calls this feature Aero Peek.) Click the nub, and the windows scoot out of the way, giving you access to documents or apps that reside on the desktop and duplicating the Show Desktop feature that Quick Launch used to offer.

Getting at your desktop may soon be­­come even more important than it was in the past. That’s because Windows 7 does away with the Sidebar, the portion of screen space that Windows Vista reserved for Gadgets such as a photo viewer and a weather applet. Instead of occupying the Sidebar, Gadgets now sit directly on the desktop, where they don’t compete with other apps for precious screen real estate.

Old Tray, New Tricks: Windows 7′s Taskbar and window management tweaks are nice. But its changes to the System Tray – aka the Notification Area – have a huge positive effect.

In the past, no feature of Windows packed more frustration per square inch than the System Tray. It quickly grew dense with applets that users did not want in the first place, and many of the uninvited guests employed word balloons and other intrusive methods to alert users to uninteresting facts at inopportune moments. At their worst, System Tray applets behaved like belligerent squatters, and Windows did little to put users back in charge.

In Windows 7, applets can’t pester you unbidden because software installers can’t dump them into the System Tray. Instead, applets land in a holding pen that appears only when you click it, a much-improved version of the overflow area used in previous incarnations of the Tray. App­lets in the pen can’t float word balloons at you unless you permit them to do so. It’s a cinch to drag them into the System Tray or out of it again, so you enjoy complete control over which applets reside there.

More good news: Windows 7 largely dispenses with the onslaught of word-balloon warnings from the OS about troubleshooting issues, potential security problems, and the like. A new area called Action Center – a revamped version of Vista’s Security Center – queues up such alerts so you can deal with them at your convenience. Action Center does issue notifications of its own from the System Tray, but you can shut these off if you don’t want them pestering you.

All of this helps make Windows 7 the least distracting, least intrusive Microsoft OS in a very long time. It’s a giant step forward from the days when Windows thought nothing of interrupting your work to inform you that it had de­­tected unused icons on your desktop.

Read more about Windows and get some tips tricks and tutorials at: UsingComputers:

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Did you know that Microsoft offer free virus protection? In this article I’ll show you how to find, download and use the various Microsoft virus protection software for Windows Vista and 7.

1) Perform a Safety Scan for Windows Vista and Windows 7

The process is free and a download is required.

Note: Internet Explorer is required to download and run the safety scan.

2) Download Microsoft Security Essentials

Security Essentials is free and provides constant protection against spyware, viruses and related malicious software.

Once installed, Microsoft virus protection security essentials runs in the background and protects your computer against unwanted viruses. Updates are regular and automatic so you don’t need to worry about having the latest protection installed.

3) Malicious Software Removal Tool

This software is also free and is installed by default with Windows Vista and 7 versions. Updates are applied regularly via the standard Windows Update process on the second Tuesday of every month.

The malicious software removal Microsoft virus removal protection tool can solve the problem of removing viruses once your computer has been infected but is not a substitute for appropriate PC virus protection software.

What you’ll need

To download and use Microsoft virus protection, you will need:

• Microsoft Windows (Vista or 7)
• Install permissions (e.g. local administrator)
• Internet Explorer 7 or higher

Conclusion

There are 3 free tools available for download at the Microsoft website. This software can help to locate, protect against and remove viruses.

These free tools are designed to run along side (i.e. not replace) other anti virus software. Free Microsoft virus protection is a great way to enhance the security of your computer if you run Vista or Windows 7.

Windows 7 Mail
By Douglas Samuel

Is it missing?

It seems unbelievable that Microsoft would no longer ship an operating system without including some sort of mail client.

Outlook Express was included with Windows 98. Outlook Express also worked with Windows 95. It was updated over the years and was still included with Windows XP.

Windows Vista shipped with a new email client: Windows Mail.

It would seem safe to assume that Windows 7 would, of course, have some sort of an email programas well.

This turns out to be incorrect. Windows 7 does not ship with any kind of bundled email client.

Is this a bad thing?

For the less tech-savvy, perhaps. There is no icon on the desktop that puts a connection your email just a few clicks away.

On the other hand, it allows users to consider the choices.

One of the choices is Windows Live Mail, a free download.

You have many other choices, including Mozilla Thunderbird (free) and Microsoft Outlook (included with Microsoft Office), to name just a few.

So how much of a problem is it that Microsoft has dropped any kind of an email program in Windows 7?

I suggest that this should rate pretty low on your list of concerns.

Microsoft still provides a free email client, you just have to take the extra step of downloading it (easy for most people with a high-speed connection).

You do have many other choices of email program, free for the downloading.

Many users, especially in the corporate world, end up using Microsoft Outlook, for compatibility with the corporate server, and more importantly, to share the calendar and appointment/meeting request systems with others.

The lack of a bundled email client is not a major loss for Windows 7.

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Doug Samuel writes the Windows 7 Journal, a site about

Windows 7.

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Copyright 2009 Douglas Samuel. May be republished providing above author

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Will this affect anyone signifficantly? Did anyone ever use Windows Mail (or Live Mail) anyway?

Windows 7 logo

Windows 7 is the next release of Windows from Microsoft and is scheduled for release on October 22^nd 2009. It will replace Vista which has had problems with performance, device compatibility and annoying /invasive pop-ups, alerts and notifications.

We’ve been looking at the Release Candidate (RC) and so far, Windows 7 looks a vast improvement on Vista. Here is a quick tour of some of the features of Windows 7 that we like.

1) Better performance

Microsoft appear to have worked hard to sort out the performance problems that Vista had. It seems that Windows 7 does appear to be faster and more responsive than its predecessor (Vista).

2) Enhanced taskbar

• Icons are larger & clearer and easier to work with. Rearrange icons, new “Jump Lists” and full Aero enabled previews of open windows make it a lot easier to work with lots of open windows.
• The “Show desktop” button is now more prominent and easier to use. Quickly minimize all windows with the touch of a button.

3) Desktop improvements

• No more sidebar. Add “Gadgets” quickly and easily directly to your desktop.
• New themes. Good looking new themes contain several high quality backgrounds that periodically rotate (similar to the Mac).
• “Snap” feature allows you to easily compare windows side by side.

4) Less annoyance & interruption from pop-ups and alerts

• All alerts are now contained in one place in the notification area. You can customize the notifications (pop ups) that you receive.
• Less alerts from User Account Control (UAC). Generally, you should notice a reduction in alerts from Windows 7 compared to Vista. UAC level can be set to one of four possible levels.

5) Parental control – New to Windows 7

• Easily set what programs (e.g. games) your kids can use and when (i.e. schedule).

So far, we are impressed with Windows 7. Although we are only running the Release Candidate at this time, it does seem pretty fast and stable.  The changes and improvements go a long way towards addressing the criticisms levelled at Vista. We believe that this could be the best operating system that Microsoft has released since XP.