I first learned about Windows 7 from Kuya Rex during The Pautakan 2008. I immediately thought, “What??? Another OS? Parang 2 years pa lang ang Vista ah. Tapos extended pa ang XP.”
Really, Vista sucks for me with all its bugs and incompatibilities with peripherals, but I consider it as Microsoft’s stepping stone to a more elegant and more user-friendly platform. So, is Windows 7 the dream OS of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer? Is this the ideal Windows Blackcomb/Vienna/Longhorn they’ve been designing?
I can say yes.
After reading Kuya Gerry’s review, I had this feeling of “Oh God, I must try 7 now!” Afterwards, I visited the Customer Preview Program website of Microsoft and made preparations to the advent my laptop has been waiting for. Ha ha!
As for preparation, I created another Windows Live acc
ount (the previous one got expired) to secure a genuine license key for my 32-bit PC. I even had problems signing up – argh, Error 440. Then, I bought a 320-GB WD external hard disk to back up all my files even if my option to upgrade won’t affect saved files and previously installed programs. Finally, I burned the ISO image of Windows 7 build 7000.
March 9 was the day — I mean, night. Minsky was with me during the installation and we were like “Ooooooowww” after the successful upgrade.
Windows Team Blog stated, “Unlike its predecessor, Windows 7 is intended to be an incremental upgrade from Vista, with the goal of being fully compatible with device drivers, applications, and hardware with which Windows Vista is already compatible. Presentations given by the company in 2008 have focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows Shell with a new taskbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup, and performance improvements.”
Here are some new and changed features.
- WordPad has now the ribbon interface
- Windows Action Center replaced Windows Security Center
- A functional transparent taskbar
- Windows Shake (When multiple windows are open, you can shake one window to minimize the others)
- Windows Snap (When a window is dragged to the top of the screen, it automatically maximizes; Windows cascade is also easier to do.)
- Improved Windows Media Center
- Windows 7 has advances in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, supports virtual hard disks, handles improved performance on multi-core processors, and has improved boot performance and kernel improvements (Wikipedia).
- Window borders and the taskbar do not turn dark when a window is maximized. Instead, they remain transparent (Aero).
- Libraries (Documents, Photos, Videos, Music)
- Gadgets (Windows Sidebar was removed)
- Internet Explorer 8
- Windows Media Player 12 (design is somewhat similar to iTunes)
- peek button and window peek:
Personally, I like the functionality of the new taskbar. I can pin my frequently used programs on it. At the back of my mind, I’m saying “boo OS X dock.”
You try it. Even if it’s a beta release, the experience of using it is different. It’s a new interface paradigm. I guess its edge from Mac OS X is its super compatibility to almost all programs and devices – even if they are Apple’s. Windows 7 builds the foundation of a dream interface. Basta, it is much better than Vista.
wow..
parang gusto ko na rin ‘tong itry..XD
[Reply]
SURE? So what now, should I switch to Windows 7 or stick with Vista? Which is faster?
[Reply]
John Carl Reply:
August 17th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Windows 7 is a lot faster. Super. 5 seconds ung shut-down time. tapos start-up mabilis din. Lipat na!
[Reply]