If you work at a company that still runs Windows XP instead of Windows Vista, there is a BIG reason! Mostly because Vista sucks for most businesses. There are simply too many hardware and software compatibility issues plus annoying system changes like User Account Control, etc.

So what to do? Wait it out! Our company is simply going to wait till 2009 when Microsoft releases (hopefully) Windows 7, which has actually gotten some very good reviews!

Windows 7 will have all kinds of new features (and a lot of junk removed from Vista too), such as a driver protection database for hardware problems, ability to share apps with others on a network, better support for Internet printing, BitLocker encryption for USB flash drives, Homegroups for super easy file sharing on a home network, and lots more.

Here are some of the features that look cool and I hope only get better:

  • Firstly, the newest version of the Windows OS will apparently be able to run on a 2 GHz processor with only 1GB of RAM! Microsoft says it will be able to run on a Asus EEE PC with no problems. That, my friends, would be a big deal. Vista is a hog and far worse than XP, so if they can turn the tide the other way, it would be amazing.
  • UAC has been totally redone and now allows fine grain control over exactly when a popup should appear. UAC was a good step in Vista to help make the computer more secure, but it was a royal pain in the butt also. Now in Windows 7, UAC can be turned to four different levels of protection ranging from Vista style to Off.

windows 7 uac

 

  • Probably the biggest GUI change in Windows 7 is the Taskbar. No longer will you see the small little tabs with the program name and icon on them. The new Taskbar looks very similar to the Mac OS Dock with only icons. The icons can also be rearranged too! When you hover over an icon, you will see all the open windows for that program as thumbnails.

windows 7 taskbar

  • Connecting to a wireless network is now much easier. Instead of having to click on View Available Wireless Networks, you can just click the tray icon and see and connect to any wireless network that is available.

windows 7 wireless network

  • Windows Explorer now has a new feature called Libraries, which are basically a virtual folder. It’s a custom view of your files that does not depend on where the files are located on the system. So you could create a view of pictures and it will find all the pictures on the hard drive and show them in that one library.

windows 7 libraries

  • Windows 7 will also support touch and multi-touch features. So get ready for iPhone type applications on Windows 7. Already a few PC’s support multi-touch like HP TouchSmart and the Dell Latitude XT laptop. This would be cool because you could turn the entire operating system into a giant iPhone! Start applications, moving windows, flipping through slideshows, etc.

There are many other features of Windows 7 that we will find out more about as new builds are released such as speech recognition, cloud applications, Windows Media Player enhancements, and Device Stage, a replacement of the plug and play window that pops up when you attach a new hardware device.

What are the features you are looking forward to most? Post a comment and let us know! Enjoy!