Most people know that Microsoft is unleashing its latest OS to the world today. Many of us have been running various versions of the software since last January but the official release is still a huge deal.
While us in the tech community have been running Windows 7 for awhile now, I sometimes forget that not everyone is. Whether people simply don’t trust beta software or haven’t been interested enough to give Windows 7 a shot, now is the time to jump. The title says it all. While this isn’t a full on Windows 7 review, I will say that the majority of people should upgrade to the new OS as soon as possible. The features it adds will certainly make it worth it for you.
First and foremost (for this site) is Windows Media Center. Not just Media Center but media in general. With the addition of Homegroup and internet sharing, Microsoft has made it extremely easy to share the content spread around your home with others and to use it while you’re not on your home network. Both of these go way beyond Media Center. In fact, internet sharing is all done within Windows Media Player and is really easy to setup.
The overall Media Center experience has been improved. From the UI to the expansion of internet content and television recording options, MS has really made it a whole new experience for users. The fact that they continue to put this much development into something that they give for free with the OS is amazing. It certainly isn’t a perfect system but they’re getting close. If anything needs to be fixed it’s the extender ecosystem. Until extenders can do everything that the PC can (IE: Netflix, Internet TV, video codec playback) it’s just not going to be on par with other systems out there that don’t differentiate between extenders and PCs.
Let’s move past Media Center for a minute though. While not all PC users are Media Center users, all Media Center users are PC users and this is where the UI of Windows 7 comes into play. Everyone has to use it at one time or another and Microsoft has really outdone themselves this time. The ability to click-hold the top of a window and move it easily has to be one of my favorite features. It’s one of those things that you don’t think about until you have it and then lose it. I have certain things I have to do within Windows Vista and it drives me crazy. The redesigned taskbar also makes life a lot easier. With window previews, the ability to pin items to the taskbar as well as a dedicated “show desktop” button in the corner (which doubles as Aero Peek on hover) makes it much more functional. The entire process is over all a better experience than Vista.
I don’t want to shill out to Microsoft here. Windows 7 of course isn’t perfect, but for those of us who have been using Vista for the last three years, it’s a breath of fresh air.
If you’ve been sitting on the fence, it’s time to get off of it. Windows 7 is worth the trouble of going through an upgrade even if you have to do a clean installation. While it’ll take some time to get used to, once you do you’ll wonder how you got along without certain features.
Congratulations to Microsoft for fixing the problems with Vista and designing an easy to use, feature rich operating system that people will simply enjoy using.
[…] and start enjoying everything that Microsoft has brought to the table in 7MC. We’ve already posted about why you should bite that bullet and upgrade and for this week’s show we discuss not only […]