Windows 7 is here!
With just 1 days after Windows 7 hit the shelves, i decided to make (yet another) post with all the great features, the available versions and their differences and much more. The first version of Windows 7, originally codenamed Blackcomb and later renamed to Vienna, officially available to public was Beta which was released on January 10th, 2009 (MSDN and TechNet subscribers got it a bit earlier as usual). A Release Candidate of Windows 7 Ultimate followed on May 5th, 2009, with a multilingual UI pack available for download via Windows Update on May 26th. RC was the last version officially available, before Windows 7 was Released to Manufacturing (RTM) on July 24th, 2009. MSDN, TechNet and MSDNAA subscribers are able to download the final version since August 2009. After this brief timeline of Windows 7, let’s see some of the most interesting features (in no particular order).
Features
1. Taskbar and Jump Menus
Probably one of the best things in Windows 7 is the new and improved Taskbar. The taskbar in general is visible to users at almost all times and provides the means to perform many tasks, so the more powerful and user-friendly it is, the better. The new Taskbar was created with that in mind i guess, since it’s much better than the one that we were used to. An first sight you may not notice much of a difference but it is significantly improved. First of all, you will see that items on the taskbar now appear with just their icon without the text, saving up space for more applications. Also the icons are by default larger so that you can easily identify each item and same instances of an application are grouped together. One of the coolest new features is the preview of an application; you can see it by hovering your mouse over the icon. You can also move your mouse over the thumbnail itself to preview the application in full size, which is pretty useful if you have many instances of a program running. You can also pin any programs you like on your taskbar to access them even faster. Another great addition is the Jump Menus. You can right click on the items in taskbar and the Jump Menu will appear. There are many things you can do from the jump menu depending on the application, for example you can start InPrivate browsing for Internet Explorer or change your status on Windows Live Messenger. Last but not least, there is a permanent button to switch to desktop on the right end of the taskbar.
2. Aero Effects – Snap, Shake
Imagine that you have a dozen windows open and you just want to focus your attention on the excel sheet you are currently working on. Minimizing all the other windows is just a matter of “shaking” the window you are interested. You also have the ability to snap a window in the left or right half of the screen by just moving it. See the following video to better understand what i’m talking about.
3. Libraries
Windows 7 can group similar content, like Movies, Music, Documents and Pictures into “special folders” called Libraries. For example, you can add the folders of your Downloaded music, the CD-ripped music and your own written songs folder into the Music Library and access them from one place altogether. No matter where in disc (or discs) your files are stored you can view all of the same type in the corresponding Library. The files are physically located in their original location but you just can see them all in the same place. There are 4 libraries (the ones at the start of the paragraph) created by default, but you can create your own and add whatever folders you want. With the power of Home Group (see #5 below), sharing of the libraries is easier than ever.
4. Device Stage
Device Stage, a new addition to Windows, provides a centralized location to interact with various devices attached to the computer, such as MP3 players, digital cameras, mobile phones and many more. It supports devices connected to USB, Bluetooth or network. Device Stage is customized by the manufacturers and provides easy access to the device’s main functions. For example if you connect a mobile phone you may have options to import pictures taken, browse the phone’s file system, start a custom application from the manufacturer. Since i don’t own any device stage-compliant device, i borrowed a screenshot from Windows Team Blog. You can see a Device Stage in action in the video on Windows 7 website.
5. Home Group
It took Windows many versions to get an easy way to share files across computers but now it’s here! You can create a Home Group (or join an existing one) and immediately start sharing files/folders or libraries. You can also select who to share it with and password protect it if privacy is an issue. Creating a Home Group option is only available in Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise editions, but you can still join an existing from Home Basic and Starter editions (see further down in this post for various editions and their features).
6. Touch support and Multi-Touch
One-finger touch support was built-in windows for a long time, but now you can do much more. Windows 7 supports multi touch and there are several gestures for common mouse actions. You can easily zoom, scroll up or down, navigate, rotate, etc using just your fingers (well, if you have a device that supports multi-touch). It’s really fun and changes the way you interact wit the computer! Windows Taskbar and Start Menu have larger icons so it’s really easy to navigate using fingers. Also Jump Menus (see #1) automatically adjust their size depending on the input method (mouse, touch).
7. One-click Connect to Network
With Windows 7, it takes just two clicks to connect to a WiFi (or other) network. Just click on the network icon on the tray and you get a list with all available networks!
8. Customized notification tray
You now have the power to select not only which items will be shown on your tray (you can do that in Vista), but also if which ones are allowed to show notifications. So, no more annoying balloons popping up if you don’t want to!
9. More options on User Account Control
The unmanageable UAC of Windows Vista belongs to the past. Microsoft has heard people’s complaints about the UAC and decided to add more options so each user can customize when a warning message should appear. Most Vista users used to completely turn it off, to get rid of the notifications each time they wanted to do the simplest thing. Now, you can just tune UAC to relax the restrictions and still enjoy the security it offers.
10. Calculator, WordPad, Paint
All these 3 applications are finally revamped with many new features and redesigned UI. Paint and WordPad now have ribbons instead old-style menus and calculator includes things like unit conversion. Here are a couple of screenshots.
11. Gadgets – No more Sidebar
Microsoft decided to remove the Sidebar which was introduced in Windows Vista. The gadgets can now be added anywhere on your desktop where you can now resize them to your needs! You can read more about the gadgets on this MSDN article.
12. “Play To”
This new feature will be quite welcomed by multimedia enthusiasts and those who own a Media Center PC. You can play your music on other PC’s or devices in your network by just right clicking on the file and selecting Play To. There is a large number of devices that support this feature including PCs running Windows 7 and Xbox360. You can find a list of more devices here.
13. Search in folders
A cool new addition on Windows 7 is the ability to search for a file inside the current folder of Windows Explorer. The search panel is there since Vista but it would search the entire computer instead. Now, you can also set filters like Size or Date Modified easily.
14. Speed and Hardware Requirements
Windows Vista users complained a lot that the OS was slow and unresponsive with long boot times. It seems that all these issues are resolved in Windows 7. The latest version of Windows feels like XP in terms of speed and responsiveness, and also uses less resources like RAM. Windows 7 can run smoothly even on low-end PCs, unlike Windows Vista. The Starter edition is specifically designed for entry level PCs and Netbooks.
15. Windows XP Mode
This feature concerns mostly businesses who have applications running on Windows XP. Using Virtual PC behind the scenes, users can now run older Windows XP programs in Windows 7 without any problems. So they can still keep using their software without any modifications and benefit from all the great stuff in Windows 7!
16. Hotkeys
On Windows 7 you can do many many things from just your keyboard.
Editions
Windows 7 will be available in 6 editions, but only the three of them will be sold in retail stores. Those are Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. Below is a table with some of the main features that each edition will / won’t include. This list is not complete, you can view the “Compare Editions” page on Windows 7 website or the relevant wikipedia article.
| Features | Home Premium | Professional | Ultimate |
| Aero | x | x | x |
| Mobility Center | x | x | x |
| Media Center | x | x | x |
| Multi-Touch | x | x | x |
| Home Group | x | x | x |
| XP Mode | | x | x |
| Presentation Mode | | x | x |
| Backup on network | | x | x |
| BitLocker | | | x |
| Multilingual Pack | | | x |
| Boot from Virtual HD | | | x |
The other three editions are: Starter, Home Basic and Enterprise.
Windows 7 Starter
The Starter edition includes a subset of the features available in full versions and is targeted for Netbooks. It will be available through OEM licensing and there won’t be an 64-bit version, just 32-bit one. Also some more limitations apply. For more information about Starter edition you can read this blog post.
Windows 7 Home Basic
The Home Basic edition will only be available to some emerging markets. This edition will include more features than the Starter edition but it will still lack some that are available in Home Premium, such as Media Center, Multi-Touch support and some Aero options.
Windows 7 Enterprise
Available only through Volume licensing, this edition will contain the same features as Windows 7 Ultimate that is available to individual users.
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