Windows 7. Review on Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

Lately have bought a MacBook, mainly because I was fed up of Windows and how the OS handled applications such as Outlook. However, at the office as all the systems are integrated towards windows, because its cheaper to install windows systems. They recently installed Windows 7 systems. I have been using these systems for a while and following are some of my observations. 1. As in Windows Vista, in Windows 7 reaching the Network Connections option is a pain. Also I could not easily modify my network connections, enabling and disabling a network connection is just so much harder. 2. Among the good things the Desktop Wallpapers can be set to keep changing, and the native wallpapers are pretty neat. 3. On the task bar, in Windows XP where the windows you opened used to be grouped together you now have an icon for the specific program, which you click on and then you get to see small icons that represent the windows open for that specific program, and you can choose amongst them. On Windows XP you could simply go and close a group of applications by right clicking on the task manager and choosing close group, it’s a bit more complicated in Windows 7. 4. While choosing the windows of a specific application on the task bar you can see what’s running in the Window, however unlike expose on the Mac it does not necessarily show you what’s currently running in that window. You can however still switch directly between two applications via the ALT+TAB option, unlike on the Mac this options shows up all the windows of all programs open at one time. 5. Instead of just stopping at putting up applications on the task manager, Microsoft should have considered putting the stacks options as well on the task manager, would have made life a lot simpler.6. The gadgets natively available on the PC are limited; of course we do not have an Internet connection at the office so I could not get my hands on the others. The watch and the calendar are good apps but you would expect more.7. Modifying the display is not as simple as it was before, you can’t just right click on the desktop and go to properties, you need to go to control panel for that.8. The search feature has been upgraded so you can search from within the start menu itself, though I believe this feature has been available for Vista users all along. One good feature within this search feature is suppose you search for excel, you not only get the excel icon, but you get a sub menu which shows the most recent documents opened which is pretty handy.9. There is something called Windows Defender on Windows 7, but I would not count on it as an antivirus software, you need to get an independent software for the same. Hardware problems remain, setting up an old printer or scanner with Windows 7 is a pain, but I have heard its better than for Windows Vista which is not saying much. If however drivers for the printer, and scanner are available specifically for Windows 7 they do work.

But many of the printers at the office did not have drivers for Windows 7. But if you are going for a new printer you should be fine.10. I have not had the opportunity to try out the Internet, media and games on the PC, because, well it’s an office PC. Networking is a slight pain if you are going to keep some Windows XP PCs onboard the network. Some Windows XP PCs are not able to access network resources connected to Windows 7 PCs, but it is not impossible to get it done, however the reverse is completely possible Windows 7 PCs can access data on Windows XP PCs.11. Some of the applications in the OS such as Word and excel have frozen on me, but so far the OS itself has not crashed. Also the Word and Excel we have are 2003, which is an older version, which might have something to do with it.12. They have given Paint a new look, which is decent, though they need a better client to surf through photographs and other pictures. Windows explorer is good, but it’s not enough. You might want to get a client such as Google’s Picasa.13. Transfer speeds have improved on Windows 7, though the 4 GB RAM on the PC might have largely contributed to it, I remember trying to transfer files on a Windows Vista 2 GB machine and it was a drag to say the least.14. Windows 7 seems to use lesser memory both in the case of Hard Disk space as well as RAM, this helps in a big way. 15. Believe it or not Bluetooth transfers and browsing, work better on Windows 7 than they do on OSX, which is pretty odd.

All in all its an improvement over Windows XP, but they have not fixed the OS's issues with applications such as outlook, which take a whole lot of time to load, and which tend to freeze a lot during regular use. Entourage which is sort of the Office version for Mac of Outlook seems devoid of such issues, and has so far i.e. for 7 months, worked seemlessly.