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Windows 7 Preview


Marc

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Just been playin around with Windows 7 ..... Have had it on my machine for a bit now, but only on a virtual machine so couldnt use all the memory in my system etc. So thought tonight I would put it on my system properly and have a real play with it.

So what changed?

Well in my opinion I have chosen to see it as windows Vista, but how it was supposed to be in the first place.



  • Taskbar - I gotta say the new taskbar is damned ugly. About twice the height of the current one, however for functionality its actually pretty cool. When minimising windows they are now all minimised in a lot more compact view. You can click on the campact icon of windows which will give you a thumbnail bar where you are highlight the windows and they will be fullscreen previewed as you hover over them. There is also the functionality for programmers to now introduce shortcuts into the taskbar icon of their applications, so for example with internet explorer you can right click the taskbar icon and your favs will pop up. Very usefull and I gotta say I used it.

  • Themes - Yep, back to the world of PLUS! for those who remember it. You can now choose themes that will change wallpaper, color, and all your sounds to go with it once more. You can also set your wallpaper to change every x days/hours which is pretty nice if you have a good selection

  • Gadgets - Yippee!!! That goddamn annoying sidebar has finally gone. The gadgets that were in it you can now quickly add to your desktop by right clicking and selecting gadgets from the context menu.

  • Libraries - This is a usefull feature for anyone who has ever changed the location of their Music,Videos,Pictures folders so they go to where you ACTUALLY store them rather than in documents. You can now add more than one folder to the list, so that when you open it, you get a folder view the same as normal, however you will get the content from all folders that have been added to the library. Pretty neat and again, something I woul definatly use.

  • Windows management mouse gestures - This is one of my favourites. You can now maximise a window by dragging it to the top of your screen. This is cool, however the best part is that you can drag one window to the left edge, one to the right and it will open them side by side in identical size windows. Excellent for when your sorting through folders, comparing things etc etc.

There are loads of other technical changes that have been improved such as the memory hogging of the new windows desktop that has been eliminated, directx 11 included, HD file support included. At long last we have native xvid and divx support.

I currently run a 64bit system for speed so I can use all my memory, however the windows 7 I am testing is only 32bit and still a lot quicker and more stable than in Windows Vista. Gotta say its a massive improvement and well worth the upgrade simply for that. As someone who likes Vista but gets annoyed at the bugs and caveats in it, windows 7 for me is a very welcome improvement and much needed.

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I run Windows 7 64Bit on my 3.0 Ghz Quad core PC and I can't fault it, its reliable, and fast and its easy on the eyes. Not bad for a freebie courtesy of a microsoft annual license.

I used to run Vista Ultimate on the same machine and it was slow and very probelmatic.

Even my crap 1.6Ghz laptop runs Windows 7 :)

Its the best operating system I've ever used.

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will if it's better for my touch screen then you can tell me more when i see you x

check to see if your screen is compatible with windows 7 before you make the jump.

if it isnt then you need to install software to make it work, and is that software available for windows 7?

also different versions of windows 7 have different features, does the basic version support touchscreen.

it woudl be a shame to buy it only to find it wont work, or you got the wrong version.

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as with any new windows release its worth waiting for service pack 1 before buying it.

new OS are bugged badly.

for instance any internet game that uses punkbuster wont work at the moment because windows 7 has not been officially released

Ordinarily I would agree with you, however since Vista has become this decades version of windows milenium (and we know how that turned out) I will be make the immediate switch on its release. Vista has more bugs than most and I will be glad to move away from it.

Yeah alright, punkbuster wont work. This is simply as the way artificial drivers work on Windows 7 has changed, however this is waiting for punkbuster to release a corrected version, not a bug in Windows 7 as suggested.

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  • 2 months later...

I am personally in love with 7. All the manageability power of XP with the cosmetics of Vista. +1 for Microsoft (which puts them at about -426453, but at least they are moving up though).

For those heavy-weight users, XP Mode works awesome too. The integration features makes if feel like an actual machine instead of a VM; but I don't think the experience is the same on a box that does NOT support hardware virtualization.

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