Microsoft has finally ripped the covers off Windows 7, giving it a public airing at the Professional Developers Conference. The good news: it looks great. The bad news: Apple’s OS X already boasts most of its new features.
Don’t be mistaken though, Windows 7 is a huge leap foward from Vista. It’s much more efficient, able to run on as little as 1GB of memory, and Microsoft has learnt from its interface mistakes with Vista.
For a start, Windows 7 uses video memory in a much smarter way. It doesn’t assign any resources to windows that’re hidden or obscured, freeing up the system’s horsepower to run whatever you’re actually working on.
The taskbar has been given an overhaul too, with refinements to connection managers and device menus. In short, Microsoft has made driving Windows much simpler. It means hooking up to a Wi-Fi network, offloading pictures from a digital camera or syncing a media player are one-click affairs, rather than the menu-ramble required by Vista.
And then there’s the visual effects. Widgets can now be liberated from the sidebar and scattered across the desktop. “Hot corners,” which have been a feature on the Mac for years, also make an appearance, so with a single movement all windows can be made transparent to get a peek at widgets or icons hidden on the desktop below.
And that’s the overall impression that the new Windows 7 gives: a hugely refined version of Windows, with some of the best user interface elements of the Mac borrowed for good measure.
As expected, Device Stage also makes an appearance, offering a one-stop management panel for anything plugged into the PC. There’s also new streaming technology that uses the PC as a hub to manage media being sent to devices around the home.
It’s a stroke of genius on Microsoft’s part, letting the PC grab files from one device and fling them to another in a different part of the house. It doesn’t even matter if the second device can’t understand the files from the first – Windows will be prepared, and transcode them on the fly.
Windows 7 even comes with native support for AAC, H.264, DivX and Xvid files without the need for extra downloads.
For once, we’re excited about the next generation of Windows. Microsoft’s learnt a hard lesson with Vista, but the latest OS looks like being an absolute barnstormer.
What do you think? Can Microsoft do enough to right the wrongs of Vista? Vote for your most-wanted features below, and add your own!
TBC | £TBC | Microsoft
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And there better be a free upgrade from the beta version called ‘vista’!!