Sunday, March 6, 2011

Windows 7

Work just upgraded my computer, way more specy then my home model. Its built on Windows 7. The software seems great, but is taking a while to get used to. Fortunately I'd used ribbons before at uni, so office wasn't too much of a struggle.

Overall Microsoft have tried to make the whole system user friendly. That is a a complete new direction for them. I like it. Sure they have stolen every new idea from someone else, fortunately they have enough money to pull it off.

The new start bar looks surprisingly familar, comes straight from the Mac system, its not as crowded though. Hovering over each button shows a small window displaying the program, very useful when you have seven word documents open at once. Very similar to the tabs in internet explorer, incidently those were stolen from firefox.

The start button is still there, comparatively ugly and not as useful as previous start buttons, the all programs menu now scrolls. Only cosmetic changes to the desktop, still much the same as 3.1.

Windows explorer (my computer or file manager) has gone through an upgrade. Took me about ten minutes to fins out what happend to the up button. Another useless innovation is libraries, the idea is to access all of your files from one place, no matter where they are stored. Basically turns into a huge messy list of files, defeating the whole intended purpose of folders.

I have mixed feelings about hiding the technical stuff. Its great having error messages that my mum could read and understand. But the changes to the file system mean its harder to keep track of where everything is going, especially if you copy programs without installing them. Developer tools, such as the visual basic editor, are also hard to find. On the upside the networking seems to work without much tweaking.

In short I like it. But like any new system it takes getting used too. In a couple of months I'll report if it is as bugfilled as previous software from microsoft...

2 comments:

Haydn said...

Do you have a spare copy of windows 7? Would you reccommend it

Kiwasi said...

I've been playing with it for a little while now. I would recommend it. I don't have a disk though, upgrade came on my work computer. Can't say I would advise anyone to spend money on it, but if you were upgrading your computer anyway.

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