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Good Evening, a number of you guys (and gal) have incessantly been asking me about what’s so special about Windows 7 and whether or not you should switch over to the messiah of a system.

I personally cant speak for each and everyone of you out there because your computing habits are obviously different and because I’m not an omniscient being .. but here’s my rundown of my top 10 features i found in Windows 7 (based on a meager 3 days of usage).

10 – Much Improved Windows Media Player

A number of good things they’ve done with WMP12, firstly the addition of a whole load more codecs, so now your iTunes .AAC music you bought off the apple store will now work with WMP. The video side of things i think has copied a lot from VLC in that it’s simple and that it just works, that and covered later, you can access the controls from the Windows Taskbar.

There’s a much much easier way of browsing networked music:

Sorry guys on my floor but i gotta say … I’ve been happily browsing your music libraries these last few days and with the risk of me sounding like some Gollum-esque internet creature that stalks for music, it’s actually been fairly addictive. That said,you can only stream the media to your computer and not actually download it, because if that was true, SONY corporation and family would come round and rape you with a long rusty >insert favourite builder’s tool<.

It does add the question of exactly how secure Windows 7 is if i didn’t even need a password or anything and with one double click, could freely browse someone’s music collection. There is an easy way to disable people from seeing yours and preventing unwanted peeping, but still, can you really protect a functionality if you didn’t know it existed in the first place? (and did i just admit to breaking some privacy law? … *shrugs*)

That said however, my iPhone has rather tied me to the ever bloated iTunes so i’m afraid sorry Microsoft but i ain’t ready to jump into bed just yet.

9 – Performance Increases

The overall boot up time of my system has REALLY sped up. I mean yes, i did have a ton of crapware on my system during Vista, but no amount of sweeps, uninstallations and the rest would have made it boot up this quick. Definitely an improvement there, and with shutting down mind you.

Although i don’t have any benchmarks for you, i’ve noticed that with the new Nvidia drivers out for Windows 7 that frame rates were a bit higher and generally smoother. I.e. no excuse for people to get their asses kicked in PES no more

8 – Connecting to Wifi Networks on the fly

I’m still at the university at the moment so using the ridiculously fast LAN, but if i wanted to, changing to a wireless network is much more of doddle than on vista. Just click on the network icon in the status bar and up flies a little box allowing on the fly changing of or connecting to networks. Saves from all the irritating clicking really, sheesh what a tough crowd us techies are …

7 – Ooooo … Themes

Alright so anybody who knows me knows I’ve been into theming and customizing the GUI and that however for those who aren’t (which is most of the world) W7 provides a much easier way of customising the look of your windows. Simply clickety click on one of the provided themes, and it’ll change everything from window colours, to backgrounds to sounds and screensavers. Like the desktop background and window colours but not the sound? Easy, just click on sounds and change it to another one. There’s also a link to get more themes to suit your taste and the install is really simple.

Also something very cool i noticed is that a theme has a few backgrounds (which can be changed) assigned to it, every couple of minutes, this changes! Although nothing new, with the transparency on all your windows, makes the windows change slightly every few minutes.

Personally I’m still waiting for some of my usual utilities to get updated to 7 before i go and deface the whole thing, but you guys can have fun with what’s baked in. That and the themes have got me hypnotised to the tune that Windows is Good and Bill Gates is my master

6 – System Requirements

New OS = New Computer?

Not necessarily the case. If your computer can support Vista then it’ll likely be able to run 7, and then some. Here’s a side by side comparison of minimum specs:

Windows 7:

• 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 GB of RAM (32-bit)/2 GB of RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB of available disk space (32-bit)/20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 or higher driver

Windows Vista

• 1 GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
• 512 MB of RAM (for Home Basic); 1 GB of RAM for all other versions
• 15 GB of available disk space
• Support for DirectX 9 graphics and 32 MB of graphics memory (for Home Basic); 128 MB of graphics memory plus WDDM support for all other versions

Mac OS X Leopard

• Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor

• 512MB of memory
• 9GB of available disk space

Ubuntu Linux

• 700 MHz or better processor
• 3GB of available disk space
• 256MB of memory (RAM)
• VGA graphics interface

Just so you know, these are the MINIMUM system requirements, so that’s not to say that you wouldn’t need a super beefed up Mac to run OS X Leopard because minimum implies “stripped down" OS. Just like how you’d likely need to turn off the “oooohhhh” and “ahhhhhhh” parts of W7 if it was run on min specs.

5 – Improved Big Screen Support

Big deal for me, if you have a laptop which most students do, and you want to either plug your laptop into a big screen for say a good cinema night in or to do a presentation, simply press Windows + P and bham, instant easy change

4 – Revamped User Account Control (UAC)

For the much maligned Vista, this was probably the feature that made it the butt of all mankind’s jokes:

Now however, if you don’t want to be harassed by such an anally retentive bouncer, you can alter the levels from “Always notify me when” (because I was never loved as a child and need the attention) to “Never notify me when” (because I’m cool and yearn to fight “the power”) level of settings. Personally I’m rather risqué and therefore would rather take it as it comes (no pun intended).

Now at first I thought this was some kind of gimmicky, hardly used thing which was just there in case some nut job wanted his precious Windows 3.1 dusty programs to work in 7. Yet surprisingly this really comes in handy from time to time.

Personally for me, I like to have MSN Messenger tucked away in my system tray so it doesn’t clutter the space on my taskbar, and being imperfect as Microsoft tends to be, there isn’t that option. So simply, to make it do what it did in Vista, Right Click on the shortcut, go to compatibility, select from the drop down menu and pick from 32-bit and 64-bit versions of XP and Vista. I’m sure there’s other uses for it out there too except I just don’t know any for now.

2 – Actually Useful Libraries

Another item I thought would be utterly gimmicky but which has turned around and bitch slapped me like a hoe is the Libraries feature. A simple drag-and-drop of a folder into a library and BOOM! All your Video related folders are accessible in one place. Me being the systematic control freak, I like to have every little thing organised into folders, so being able to access everything in one place saves scrummaging around the depths of my hard drive. (You can also create custom libraries like “Folders which hold things I’d rather hide from mother”)

1 – Windows Taskbar Awesomeness

Yes it’s a long time coming but finally here’s number 1 on the list, the Windows Taskbar. Now before you go and click on that ever growing X in the top right hand corner, hear me out … The taskbar is there and will always be there, whether you’re browsing the web, listening to music, doing your coursework etc etc, so it makes sense to make it useful right. Obviously if you’re watching a full screen vid or playing COD4 then no, but otherwise it’s probably the part of the system you use most.

One thing i was impressed about was the progress bars, whether you’re downloading from Internet Explorer, copying or moving files etc, it’ll fill your taskbar slot with a nice green gauge meaning you never have to keep checking to see if that Pornographic educational video you were downloading had finished or not. You’d be surprised how much you’ll end up relying on this.

Some people will decidedly miss the Quick Launch on their Taskbar, however not to fret, you can now pin programs to the taskbar. Simply what this means is that like my FeedDemon or MSN, it’s always there for easy opening. Once I’m done with it and close it, it simply returns to its humble state sitting cutely on the taskbar waiting patiently for my return.

This next feature is really pretty useful on certain programs like WMP, MSN and IE8. The ability to control the program from the taskbar without needing to open it. Need a new Tab? Need to quickly change your status? Or even just to change to the next song? Not a problem.

Oh and not to mention the oh so useful ability to freely move around windows in the taskbar as you feel fit.

Conclusions

Thirty minutes later, an apple, two wine gums and a Magners later and that’s my top 10 list for Windows 7. I think something I’ve noticed about new OS’s is although yes the addition of big bright sparkly things is all good and well, but often it’s the little touches that make all the difference to a good OS. Other people will have the list in a different order, and of course there’s a ton more other things they’ve added like multitouch support, side by side window viewing, aero shake, system-wide start menu search, Media streaming, remote apps, Bluetooth 2.1 revamp, Wireless USB support blah blah blah … but hell, my site, my list .