windows 7 review
Windows 7 Review – Part 7: Compare & Choose Which Version To Buy?
October 25, 2009
If you’ve been following Windows 7 review week, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of the various features included in Windows 7, but like Vista there isn’t just one version of Windows 7, there are 6.
You’ll probably only come across 3 though, which are Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate edition. If you buy a new PC from a manufacturer, you won’t have to decide which version to buy as it will come pre-installed on the PC. Most home computers will ship with the Home Premium version, although more expensive builds may ship with Ultimate.
So what’s the difference? The obvious difference is the price, with pricing at £99.95, £147.95 and £157.29 respectively for Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate version of Windows 7. (Pricing taken from PC World – who somewhat surprisingly have the cheapest prices for each of the Windows 7 full versions I could find!)
Continue reading »Windows 7 Review – Part 6: Included Applications
October 24, 2009
When you use Windows 7, you may notice the lack of included applications compared to previous versions of Windows. You won’t find a messenger application or a movie maker without downloading them from Microsoft, but don’t worry! You still have Paint, Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center, the three applications that this article concentrates on. You may question why Paint is included in the list, as we’ve had it in every version of Windows since 1.0 in 1985, but it’s undergone quite a facelift that might get your attention…
Windows 7 Review – Part 5: File and Software Compatibility
October 23, 2009
The majority of testing I’ve been doing with Windows 7 has taken place on my Unibody Macbook. Every time I install Windows on one of my OS X machines, one of the first things I do is install Mac Drive so that I can read files from my OS X partition. You can imagine my surprise when on first boot, my ‘E’ drive, also known as ‘Snow Leopard’ was visible in Windows Explorer, with every file on the partition visible.
Functionality is limited, as from what I can tell from testing, you can only read from the HFS formatted partition – whenever I try to write to it, I receive an error message telling me that I don’t have the privileges to write to the drive. Even so, being able to read from my Mac’s partition without third party software in Windows is a very nice addition to Windows 7 for us Mac users!
Continue reading »Windows 7 Review – Part 4: Performance On Less Powerful Hardware
October 22, 2009
A lot of people are going to be upgrading from Windows XP straight to Windows 7 over the coming months, but not everyone’s going to get a brand new PC to go with their brand new operating system, so how will old hardware running an OS written 10 years ago cope with Windows 7?
According to Microsoft, the system requirements for 7 are a 1GHz processor capable of 32-bit or 64-bit; 1GB RAM if you’re installing the 32-bit version of Windows 7 or 2GB RAM if you’re installing the 64-bit version; 16GB hard drive space for 32-bit, or 20 for 64-bit and a DX9 graphics card. These requirements are almost identical to the stated requirements for Windows Vista, although if you wanted to keep your sanity when running Vista, you probably needed better specs than what Microsoft recommended…
Continue reading »Windows 7 Review – Part 3: Security
October 21, 2009
Ah, User Account Control – arguably the most irritating feature of Windows Vista. Sure you had the option to turn it off somewhere deep in the control panel, but then you had a balloon demanding your attention in the bottom corner of the screen telling you to ‘Check your security settings’. When Vista was in development, Microsoft made a point about security, but the answer wasn’t exactly great. So what’s changed in Windows 7?
For starters, UAC is still here, but it’s more subtle than it was in Vista, as you have the option to choose between 4 levels of notification: Always notify when programs install software, make changes to your computer or if you change Windows settings (Vista…); the default option which is the same as the top level apart from not notifying you when you change Windows settings; the third level, which is the same as the default settings, except it doesn’t dim the screen when UAC appears and the fourth level, which doesn’t notify you at all. Unlike in Vista, there aren’t any annoying balloons demanding your attention on the quick launch bar when you turn UAC off either.
Continue reading »Windows 7 Review – Part 2: Aero Features
October 20, 2009
Aero made its debut in Windows Vista with translucent windows, a newly designed taskbar and quite a bit of eye candy. Despite this, it never really added much functionality to the OS and to me it was more of a gimmick than a useful feature, although I did find myself using Aero Flip quite often. In Windows 7, however, it makes quite a few advancements with new features and improvements over old features.
I already wrote a little on some of the new Aero features in part one of the Windows 7 review, talking about features such as Aero Peek which is integrated into the new taskbar. In addition to Peek, there are two more key additions on the Aero scene named ‘Snap’ and ‘Shake’.
Continue reading »Windows 7 Review – Part 1: The New Taskbar
October 19, 2009
Rightly or wrongly, Vista has been hated by the majority since its release in 2007. The taskbar didn’t add any extra functionality compared to Windows XP, and needed a lot of resources for Aero. Cue Windows 7… Well, Aero is still there, but it’s got a purpose as well as a taskbar that adds functionality compared to XP and Vista.
The new taskbar is probably one of the first things you’ll notice if you’re looking at Windows 7 for the first time, as it’s distinctly thicker than the taskbar in Vista and comes with some quite nice features. For those of you in to eye candy, the Windows ‘Orb’ glows whenever you hover over it with your mouse, almost like a child trying to get the attention of its parent. When I first started using Windows 7 it got on my nerves a bit, but you get used to it over time and it doesn’t constantly demand your attention, so no worries there!
Continue reading »Windows 7 Review – Introduction
October 19, 2009
Well the final Windows 7 release is now upon us; in fact I received my full retail Windows 7 pre-order copies this morning which I’ll be looking to install as soon as possible, that is once I’ve managed to get some new computer parts ordered to actually build a new computer with. It’s been quite a ride if you’ve been following the tech news of this operating system; it’s had various potential versions (especially for EU customers) and browser options talked about, but thankfully those issues have now all been settled and we have a fairly straight-forward line up of potential versions of Windows 7 to buy.
