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Windows 7: The Upcoming Microsoft Operating System
Microsoft has learned from it's previous experience with Vista and is rolling out a new operating system called Windows 7. Windows Vista has such a bad reputation that Microsoft felt compelled to come out with a new operating system.
Microsoft made sure that Windows 7 will run better on the same hardware requirements than Windows Vista. Early benchmarks indicate that Windows 7 outperforms even the latest version of Windows Vista in all aspects.
Microsoft has handed out test builds of the Windows operating system since October 2008 to selected testers. While the early versions where lacking some of the features they did give a good impression of the things to come. One of the main and first changes that users will see is the new Windows 7 Taskbar that got revamped completely.
The sidebar which was prevalent in Vista has been taken out and the gadgets show up on the desktop. A new feature called libraries, groups folders together so they can be searched in one location.
Windows 7 can be controlled with your fingers. You can scroll and zoom with flicks and pinches. The drawback here is that many of the icons are too small to use with your fingers. To use this feature use applications that are designed for touch.
Adding a new method of input to an operating system does come with the problem of adopting the operating system for all different input methods.
Device Stage is another new feature in Windows 7. It can be utilized by hardware manufacturers as a specific control center for their devices to control what happens during connection of the device.
The device stage can be updated anytime through a metadata service via windows. Wordpad and Paint have been updated in a style similar to office 2007. It uses a ribbon UI to accomplish this but windows did not seem to be ribbon driven in this preview.
Windows Media Player was updated as well. It now comes in a light version and supports many several codecs like divx, xvid, aac or h264 which means that most videos can now be played without codec installation. Another addition is DirectX 11.
Data on removable devices can now be encrypted with the new Bitlocker To Go software which is an addition to the Bitlocker software that originated in Windows Vista. Network shares can now be used without VPNs thanks to this feature as well.
The overall security of windows seven seems to take a similar approach to vista, which tells the user when certain programs have expired.
Microsoft build Windows 7 on the Vista code but streamlined and optimized it. One of the main aspects of Windows 7 is compatibility with all devices and applications that were running fine under Windows Vista to avoid application incompatibilities.
Users have high hopes that Windows 7 will be another Windows XP operating system. Especially those that have skipped Windows Vista are looking forward to the release.
About the Author Martin runs a premier Windows 7 blog that contains the latest news about Windows 7. There is also a Windows 7 Forum on the news portal.
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