Windows 7 : Can it outshine the failure of Vista?

Friday, November 14, 2008, 7:38
Technology
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About two weeks earlier, at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference 2008, Windows 7 made its first official public appearance. Microsoft made an API-complete, pre-beta version of Windows 7 operating system available for the first time. This is the first true hands-on experience of Windows 7 for analysts and developers. Windows 7 have some similarities with Vista, but the new operating system from Microsoft includes major new user interface updates, and it also prospects to work much better with third-party hardware and software than Vista. It was an impressive debut for Windows 7. One can however ascertain that there will be significant changes in it before its release late next year.

The designers of Windows 7 believe that the key features of the latest release of Microsoft windows will make our daily computing lives simpler. Some of these features incorporated in the latest version of Windows are:

1. HomeGroup – Oversimplified home networking and sharing of media files and printers
2. Device Stage – A single page that gives access to all the capabilities of devices such as phones, MP3 players, printers, cameras, etc.
3. Windows Touch – Specially designed for mouse-free PC interaction on touch-sensitive screens.

Quick launch icons make way for a new innovation that enables one to pin-up an application’s taskbar button. One can also position the taskbar buttons anywhere they like on the bar, instead of windows deciding where to keep them. Keeping your mouse over a taskbar button brings up a small horizontal preview of each document open in the application, and keeping over one of those previews brings up a full-screen preview of the open document. Placing your cursor on the notification area of the taskbar shows a preview of the desktop and all the gadgets that are placed on it.

Windows 7 also includes the latest version of windows media player, which enables one to play songs by right clicking their thumbnail – no need to load the windows media player! Position and size of the applications windows can now be easily controlled by just dragging them and moving it to various parts of the screen – the manual resizing days are gone!

There are many more features of Windows 7 that will need to be discovered. The designers of windows 7 believe that it will be a much awaited success for Microsoft.