A Return to Simplicity
“I just want it to work!” This cry for justice from even the most technical PC user is answered with Windows 7. While not perfect by any means, Windows 7 makes doing complicated things simple again – A welcome relief for PC users. For this mini-review we’ll look at a few ways this is accomplished.
Windows 7 makes it simple to…
access your programs.
You know that long bar to the right of the Start button on the bottom of your screen in Windows? That’s your task bar and it’s received a big upgrade in Win 7. Now, instead of cluttering your desktop with dozens of programs, pictures etc. you can simply “Pin” things to the taskbar so you have instant access to them.
Microsoft takes this several step further by allowing you to interact with these programs in new ways. For instance when you right click on a program such as Microsoft Word, a jump list of all your recent Documents appears, letting you choose one to go directly to. Same concept applies to iTunes with your music, the internet with the recent sites you visited and so on.
Additionally, when you have several instances of the same program open at the same time, they are grouped together under one icon instead of being shown seperately, thus decluttering your taskbar.
multitask.
Using multiple programs at the same time has never been so easy. In Windows 7 a little feature called aerosnap allows you to easily manipulate programs to your will. Need to read an article online and write about it at the same time? Or perhaps compare two products while shopping online? Just grab the window you wish to move and drag it to the left, as if you were moving it off-screen. This will make the window snap to the left side of the screen. Do the same thing to another window and…well, just watch this video.
After months of use, I’ve found Windows 7 to be fast, reliable and…simple. It’s not a perfect Operating System, but honestly I’ve had next to no issues apart from some initial upgrading problems (which were resolved). If you own a PC, you owe it to yourself to make the upgrade. It’s truly a revamped Windows with a touch of Apple design. What’s not to love?
