The Deli’s Pick

T-minus five hours, and it’s wedding time.

Let the shin-dig begin.

This is Jessie’s Uncle Tom. Yes, I am willingly marrying into this family.

As I write this, I am blogging from a strange new frontier, an alien interface known as “Windows 7.” I have downloaded the release candidate, because the temptation of a brand new version of Windows free of charge for a year was just too good to pass up.

I don’t really know what I’m going to use this space for, but I thought about starting off with a blog about Windows 7. I figured I’d log my experience, so started a new weblog here at the oft-defunct Deli, but then changed my mind. A little while later, I discovered a Windows Live tool called Writer, a program in 7 that lets you edit any manner of blog right from the desktop. So, of course, I had to try it out. Now it only makes sense to go ahead as planned and blog this up. So, here we are now!

What follows is not necessarily structured, but simply a gathering of things I’ve noticed, liked and disliked about my Seven experience so far. I just thought I’d put my thoughts to paper and see how it looks. Enjoy!

The installation was easy. Very painless. It took twenty-one minutes from the time I booted up the install DVD to the time I was at the desktop.

I’ve read everywhere that 7 has the chops under the hood to provide a truly stable experience. I haven’t spent enough time with it to pass that judgment, but I can say that the bells and whistles are really spiffy. Everywhere you look, things have been smoothed up and jazzed out. There are nice little touches everywhere you look. Altogether the interface is sharp and, despite being based on what we’ve seen in Vista, feels very fresh.

The taskbar is tough to get a handle on; here, it has received the most significant upgrade since its conception back in Windows 95. Gone are full-on buttons. Windows 7 instead uses a sort of icon for each program you have open. Grouping windows is turned on by default. I have adamantly opposed window grouping since XP. It tidied up your taskbar, but was so clumsy I never used it. Fortunately, Seven has totally rehauled the window grouping to where it is not only functional, but welcomed. I can’t imagine turning it off. Also vastly improved is the right-click menu. Right-clicking on an icon used to bring up the bare minimum of useless commands: Move, Restore, Resize, Maximize, Minimize, and Close. Now, you get a whole slew of cool, useful commands, such as application tasks and recent documents. You can even pin a document to the menu permanently, to act as a sort of bookmark so you can easily access it whenever you want. This is the kind of thing that you don’t even think about until one day when you realize you’re using it, and often.

Another cool bit regarding the taskbar to add to the Bells & Whistles folder: when mousing over the buttons, why waste your time with a boring old light-up when you can custom-color it? Check it out.

Near as I can tell, it takes a dominant color from the icon and lights up the button accordingly. Plus, the light follows your cursor, so the brightest spot is right under your mouse. A very cool effect.

Also of note is the brand new MS Paint! Paint has gotten a massive upgrade. It’s not even the same program any more at this point.

Also looks like they were going for some title bar shortcuts, as well:

That is customizable, too. By clicking on the arrow, you can add icons such as open and print. The Home and View tabs cycle through tools; notable tools on View are the Ruler and Gridlines. All way too classy for the traditional Paint, let me tell you. The blue button there brings down a large, very visual list of your typical File options.

I don’t know if these kinds of details are in more programs than just Paint – the Writer program I’m using is very traditional by comparison. Still, it’s a fresh little change, though you have to wonder if it was done to increase productivity or just because it CAN be done.

Momentarily back to the more important features – one thing I’m very disappointed about is the fact that I can’t test the new XP Mode. Windows 7 has a Virtual XP Mode add-on that is said to be able to emulate Windows XP for complete backwards-compatibility with old programs. The catches: it will only be available for Business, Enterprise and Ultimate editions, and your processor has to support Virtualization Technology, which mine does not. (There’s an Intel Processor Identification Utility available that can tell you if yours has it.) The premium edition requirement is no problem since the Release Candidate is Windows 7 Ultimate, but without virtualization, I probably can’t run XP Mode. A shame.

I think that’ll about do it for now. I have more impressions to post, such as the new Aero themes (really nice), Internet Explorer 8, and Writer, and I’ll be trying a plethora of programs to see what sticks. One thing I’d like to try is Nero 7 – there’s a Vista-compatible release downloadable from Ahead’s site, but the original Nero 7 Ultra Edition discs I have were completely incompatible with Vista. It’ll be interesting to see if 7 can handle it.

Until next time!