Remember a few years back, Windows XP had recently finally started to be good. Apple was starting to kick some butt with their very pretty and much cheaper operating system. It was very shiny. Microsoft saw this, probably heard a lot of feedback and said “Hey, we like shiny things, people like shiny things, let’s make something pretty and we will continue to be rich.” For the record, that was not a quote from any known Microsoft employee. So with this in mind, Microsoft made their operating system that was supposed to last ten years, Windows Vista.

The problems with this operating system were really just amazing. Sure it was much nicer to look at, but that’s really it. It has since become a lot better with several patching and updates, but people were not impressed. With the complete lack of love for this operating system, Microsoft set out to create their next ”masterpiece” and hopefully win some folks back to the Microsoft world. Thus begat Windows 7.

With all of that bad Vista taste resonating in the people’s mouth, Microsoft went into damage control and quickly produced Windows 7. Their claim was that this operating system would be what Vista should have been. Was this a good thing? Well apparently yes. Even in its beta form, Windows 7 had much fan fare. Although in its raw state, and without the knowledge of cost and such, people in general seemed to enjoy Windows 7. Would the mass population though? Could they be persuaded to return to the land of the PC? Well they made a solid effort to bring people back.

I started with a fresh install. This meant formatting the hard drive and reinstalling the entire system from scratch. With this version of Windows, this process is much more user friendly. Not as much clicking, not as many options, and much quicker. This was a good start. Still, with much reluctance, I press on and wait for the catastrophe.

Fast forward, I am at the log on screen. The startup music plays and before my very eyes, here is Windows 7. Now one of the most annoying things about Vista, were the constant pop ups asking if you are sure you want to do everything. Now for some people this can be helpful as some people may be unaware of what they are doing, but in all reality, those same folks will probably just click through anyways. So off to the revamped control panel where I disabled these pop ups, with ease I might add, and now I am happy.

So pretty. Yes this version of Windows is again very pretty but right away I notice that my system is doing well handling all of these fancy bells and whistles. I plod on. One of the coolest new features about Win 7, Aero Peek. This is very cool. Basically the user still has the task bar at the bottom, the clock and date in the bottom right coroner, and the circular start button, but after that the awesomeness explodes in your face. Aero Peek stacks similar open icons such as multiple folder windows, documents and or browser windows or tabs. If you hover your mouse over the icons, it will bring up all of the open windows of said icon in little real time windows. This is amazing and it works well. I love this feature.  Also with the taskbar, windows have implemented bigger icons which are more appealing to the eye. You can now Pin items to the taskbar as it now works as a sort of quick launch as well.

Another novel little feature, Windows Shake. At first this may seem kind of useless, but after some use this feature is really cool. Basically if you use your mouse to grab an open window and quickly shake said window, all of the open windows will minimize. Very cool and innovative. Aero Snap is another lesser known new feature. Basically you can drag an open window to the left or right and the window will auto fill to the left or right making multiple windows easy to control.

A few other features such as search have been redone and now work much better. The windows key as some cool new features such as the windows key+p will open up display options on your monitors so that you can quickly change your dual monitor setup to clone or extended. Windows media player has again improved some and the Media Center seems to work a lot better than its Vista counterpart.