Windows 7 Mini-Review Part 5

Today’s review is just a mini review. One of the first things that many people do when installing Windows is install codecs, well no more! Windows 7 now supports H.264, AAC, MP4, 3GPP, 3GPP2, ASP, AVCHD, and HDV. Windows 7 also natively supports XVID. I opened up one of my videos after installing Windows 7, and it started playing. It had been a while since I reinstalled Windows, so I had forgotten about codecs. A few days later it hit me, I hadn’t needed to install any codecs!

In addition, transcoding is being build into the Windows 7 shell. Dragging and dropping videos into a portable player auto-converts the video to the format that the player prefers. It also supports hardware based transcoders which can be built into the motherboard. They are not common now, but may become more common later on.

(Images from istartedsomething)

Windows 7 Review Part 4

One of the biggest features of Windows 7 is the new Superbar. The Superbar is a new taskbar that gets a lot of things right.

Now I have a bunch of programs open, so the individual items in the superbar are a little smaller than normal. For reference, the entire superbar:

So, the first and most obvious change in the Superbar is that it is very transparent, as opposed to the not really transparent Vista taskbar. This lets it blend in with any wallpaper really well.

Green wallpaper:

White wallpaper:

And a picture for the wallpaper:

You may have noticed the small icons on the superbar, as well as what look like regular running tasks. The icons are items pinned to the superbar. Clicking on one runs that program. The program’s task appears in the same place as the icon, and the icon goes away once the program is closed. So from the last picture, if I open Microsoft Word, it changes to:

If items are not pinned to the superbar, they just appear when run in the order in which they are run, just like on the old taskbar.

Window previews are now much more useful, so if I mouse over my firefox sessions(which are auto-grouped), I get this:

The orange glow is determined from the main color in the icon, and is centered at my mouse. If I mouse over the task manager icon it glows a light green. The faint blue glow highlighting the second from the left preview shows which window would open if I click. Moving the mouse moves both the orange glow and the blue glow. If I move my mouse onto the preview I can select one that way, and can then click the x in the corner of a window to close it. When the mouse leaves the preview, the glow on the superbar disappears.

The arrow on the right of the window group is called a destination list, and programs can be made to take advantage of this. Certain programs(ones which keep a recently opened documents list) automatically populate this list.

So for instance, Microsoft word lets me quickly jump to one of my recent or frequently used documents in this list. Internet explorer keeps internet history in this list. Windows Media Player keeps a recently played list. Applications can be extended by their developers to put data in these lists. In this build there are a few bugs with these lists, such as the white bar at the bottom, but those are not present in the build that was shown off at PDC.

In its live preview, Windows Media Player now gives the option to skip forward, back, pause, and change volume. It also shows now playing information.

One thing that has long annoyed Windows users in the old taskbar was the system notification area, also known as the system tray. This has really been cleaned up in Windows 7.

The faint bar at the right is a shortcut to minimize all open windows. This is the entire system tray. The little lighthouse icon is the solution center shortcut reminding me that I turned off Windows Defender. What it warns you about can be customized. Likewise, what any program notifies about can be customized in an easy to use menu. All non-system icons are automatically put in a menu accessed through the arrow.

Clicking customize allows notifications and icons to be moved into the main system tray if there is something you need quick access to. Anyone who has used windows for long periods of time without cleaning programs up carefully knows that the system tray quickly becomes a huge part of the taskbar. Programs fill it up until it is just a mess. Windows 7 lets it all be kept in check easily.

Clicking on the solution center icon gives a nice compact menu displaying what Windows thinks is wrong with your system, and it usually has good advice.

Clicking on the wireless icon gives a quick network summary that allows easy switching between networks. Connecting to an unsecured network now requires just one click to start the process, and a few clicking next. Connecting to a secure network is just as easy, adding the step of entering a password. It all used to be a bit of a hassle, not much, but this is a definite improvement.

The Superbar is a huge improvement over the old taskbar, and is arguably better than the dock in OS X. The dock often wastes space, as it makes the entire bottom of the screen unusable while only using half of it(or a bit more). The Superbar wastes very little space. Items expand up to a certain point to fill the bar. Shortcuts can be added with context menus which are much more useful than stacks. This is a really impressive improvement that would alone make Windows 7 a big step up from Vista.

Windows 7 Review Part 3

This post will be about the small little touches that I have noticed that make Windows 7 more useful.

1. When entering an incorrect password, there is no longer a long pause before you are told that the password is incorrect. In Vista, the computer looks like it has accepted the password, and then a second or two later tells you that you entered an incorrect password, no more!

2. When searching in the start menu, the right pane goes away to make more room for search results.

3. Windows 7 allows notifications to be turned off in increments.

So you no longer need to have unneeded notifications and icons in your system tray.

4. The information section of Explorer is now smaller.

Remember on Vista this was a large and often unusable bar.

5. Network sharing is now a breeze with the Home Group feature.

It makes it easy to set permissions, sharing(both Upnp and file), and puts it all together in an easy to use fashion. The libraries feature(either in the next review or the one after) makes this even easier to do, as you don’t have to set permissions on all of your photo folders, you can just aggregate them and set Library permissions.

One final thing, I managed to get the native resolution working on my monitors using powerstrip(which may appear in a review next week), but I think that the reason I am getting these problems is that my graphics card(ATI x800Pro) is starting to be on the old side where compatibility is concerned.

Windows 7 Review Part 2

One feature today, the solution center. The solution center is the result of years of control panels and security centers. Anything that might be wrong, or needs fixing, or could be changed and has to do with reliability and security, is available here.

This center makes it easy to fix problems, backup the system, run windows update, and change firewall or internet settings. It also allows control of the dreaded UAC(user account control). UAC was a menace in Vista, and there were only to modes, overprotective, and off. Windows 7 fixes this:

In the version I’m running, there are four options, and the least protective is enabled on the Admin account by default. You can also tell it what to bug you about:

There are also many new maintenance features, or rather, the old ones are aggregated here in an easy to use way:

The solution center does what third party programs have been failing to do for so long, provide an easy and not bloated interface for controlling your computer’s security and doing basic maintenance.

Windows 7 Review Part 1

Over the next two weeks or so, every three days(I hope!) I’ll publish another part of my set of Windows 7 reviews. I hope to focus either on three small features or two big features(or one huge feature) per review. So, I would like to start with three small features. These are:

• New Games Folder
• New Display Resolution Menu
• New Theme Manager

The new Games folder is a big improvement on a small feature. Windows Vista included a games folder which listed installed games, and checked for system requirements and compared them to current system. It now includes the option to auto-check for updates to games, and to download news and info about games from the providers. It also now shows recently played game info. It lists links to the websites of game providers. Microsoft has also brought back Internet Spades, Internet Checkers, and Internet Backgammon. There is now a link to parental controls which allow users to set per-user parental controls. It also contains links to control panel applets such as Hardware, Performance, Displays, and Firewall. This puts everything game-related in a simple, easy to use format which will make PC gaming fun, not tedious.

The new display resolution menu deserves a screenshot:

I am normally the first to criticize Microsoft for not living up to the standards of Linux or Mac OS X, but in Windows 7 I have to say that they really have gotten it right. This is the first little piece of it. If you remember, the old menu was difficult to use. It didn’t make it easy to manage multiple monitors(other than extend, there were no other easily accessible options). It made it near impossible to change orientation, but this is fixed. The new setup can also show unused display ports. My one gripe, and one I have had since Vista, is that Windows does not always recognize all of the available resolutions. Both of my monitors support 1680x1050, and my graphics card supports it(Ati Radeon x800pro). This is probably just a bad driver, but it would be nice if there was a good way to force a resolution(if there is a way, please comment).

The new theme manager allows themes(combinations of wallpaper and glass color) to be managed easily.

It really is improved. If you remember, the old manager looked terrible compared to this.

Overall, Windows 7 is shaping up to be really great. I haven’t posted on the more important features, as I feel I really should spend a good amount of time writing about them. Some more to come(not necessarily in order):

• Aero improvements
• General UI improvements
• UAC
• DPI
• Superbar
• Search
• Libraries
• Personal Folders
• Home Group
• And more

Windows 7 screenshots

Lots of Windows 7 build 6780 screenshots are available at Winfuture. With PDC coming up so soon, I thought these would be interesting as a look of what might be coming. You can see the redesigned start menu and search box.

The new calculator looks useful for a change.

Notepad now has a ribbon, although there are very few tabs on the ribbon.

Those are the most noticeable changes, though I recommend that you look at the screenshots for yourself.

Windows 7 at PDC 2008

It seems that anyone attending PDC 2008 will get a pre-beta version.

Links:

http://www.windowsvienna.com/windows-7-pre-beta-distributed-on-october-28-a22.html

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/09/25/pick-up-a-pre-release-copy-of-windows-7-for-just-a-few-thousand/