Upon upgrading from WinXP to Windows 7 64 bit I couldn't wait to see how Win7 would perform. I remember the jump from Win98SE to XP and was very impressed. Windows 7 seems to be holding its own against the previous favourite however there are still a few things that get on my goat.
Overall, Win7 is a very polished product. I haven't had the chance to use it for a long period yet, but at first look it is very fast, attactive to the eye and simple to use. Micro$oft have added a few new little features here and there to make window handling easier which is also nice. My favourite parts so far are:
1. Start menu is in a framed area - no more going to "Programs" (or "All Programs" as it's called now) and half the desktop disappears under the start menu (and usually massive video lag and hard disk thrashing would ensue)
2. Grab a window and shake it to minimize all but - This is one of the window controls they've added. Click and grab a window's title bar and shake it a little. Every other open window will minimize and you're left with the one you're holding. Neat.
3. Smooth window transitions - The effects used to open, close, minimize windows are nice. Fading in and out, and upon logon the desktop fading into view is nice. Let's hope it doesn't bog down in the future and stays as smooth as it is on installation.
4. Speech Recognition - Let's face it. It has to happen one day. Micro$oft has added (what seems to be) an improved Speech Recognition system to Win7 and it seems quite usable though it looks like it may need a good month or so of training to understand me.
Now for the annoyances I have found so far:
1. The old "taskbar over the window's title bar" - This bug is still in Win7. It was also in XP. I have my taskbar at the top of the screen and some windows will open at the very top of the screen too. The problem is, the title bar of the window will sit beneath the taskbar denying you right to move, minimize or maximize the window. Fail.
2. No opposite-click context menu on taskbar items - Continuing on from the last annoyance, Win7 has taken a step backwards here. In XP, when the window was stuck under the taskbar I used to opposite click the taskbar item for that window and select "Move" then press an arrow key. This would let me then move the window with my mouse so I could access the title bar. Win7 only offers the context menu if an app has 2 or more windows open. Apps with 1 window open have no context menu on the taskbar as far as I can see.
3. No out-of-box support for Windows Help File format - I tried to open a "Windows Help" file (a .CHM I think) and the OS recognizes the format but cannot open it. There is a Micro$oft knowledge base article here: http://home.beardeddonkey.com/comments. ... 128-112626 that allows you to install an update to support opening of help files. Satri tells me they plan to add this support later this year (2010).
4. Programs being killed when PC goes into sleep mode - Recently I've noticed that if I put the PC into sleep mode to save power when not in use, Windows 7 will kill a select few apps for no good reason. Mumble (an open source voice chat program) is one that gets "killed" upon sleeping. Initially I thought it may be because the program times out and it shuts down on awakening the PC but it is also killing Mouse Recorder Pro 2 (a macro program I use to do hundreds of repeatitive clicks for foolish games like FarmVille on Facebook) which has no network activity as far as I know.
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