Windows 7 reviewed

Okay, here it is – The full review of Windows 7: Home Premium, 64bit edition brought to you by yours truly :)
It has been nearly two weeks since I first installed it, and so far its been good.
p.s. if you don’t like computers or couldn’t care less for new operating systems, please bear with me on this one. Thanks.

First reaction: I love it.
To be honest here, I guess this is starting out almost the same way as the Bush vs. Obama analogy: Windows 7 is amazing, simply because it is not Vista. It does right a lot of things that Vista messed up.
For instance, the power button doesn't directly put your computer to sleep (which was a major annoyance – how many people actually use “Sleep mode”?!); now you can choose which action you want to do...and the default is "Shutdown" which is quite the way it should be.

Actually customizability is the key here:
Almost every aspect of Vista that drove everyone up the wall can be customized to make it more bearable and even useful.
Like taskbar notifications, Windows defender (yes, its still here), UAC, instant one-click wallpaper changes (‘themes’ is a whole new feature in Windows7), Aero Peek options…it goes on!
But to make this more organized, here’s a list of stuff that makes this a winner:

1. The taskbar is revamped, quite nice and takes a while getting used to, but I appreciate the fact that you can now "pin" programs to it just like you would on a dock. And the best thing is, a right-click gives you contextual options.
   Like for instance right-clicking Chrome shows new window, new incognito window and even some of your recently visited pages, while a right click on say, a media player shows recently played and so on.
   
   
2. I'm happy it DOES NOT come with Windows Mail, Windows Calendar or Windows Gallery. Actually in Vista I was quite confused why they were there because the EXACT same thing is also available on WindowsLive! (as Live Calendar, Live Mail and Live Gallery.
   So now you don't have twice as many preinstalled software...only one set of them and I have to admit that Live Writer is pretty good.
   
   
3. When installing say a program or something, the installation progress actually shows on the taskbar icon when minimized. Nifty!
   
   
4. ‘Libraries’ is a cool new feature that allows you to collate different folders from all over your computer onto a single location to easily look through it.
   Like say you have your downloads from each of your browsers in different locations. You can now add all these locations to your ‘Downloads Library’ so that you can find all your downloads in one place – even as the folder content changes.
   
   
5. Windows Media Player 12 does not automatically steal file extensions from your existing (already default) video players. Instead, it asks you politely if you do want it to take them. And of course, you only have yourself to blame if you click on 'yes'.
   
   
6. Those gadgets are now on their own on the desktop, without that horrible sidebar. Unfortunately the changes here are only skin deep and it still runs as a single process called (what else?) "sidebar.exe".
   
   
7. The drag-to-resize-windows is a simple yet ingenious new feature in Windows7:
   Drag to the top of the screen to maximize, or drag to either side to snap to it taking up exactly half the screen on any side (previously the only way to do this was to select "Show windows side by side" from the taskbar context menu.
   The best part is that when you drag it away, it automatically shrinks back to the original size when you drag it away. And because most people these days use widescreens, it really makes comparing two windows a ton easier.
   A tip of the hat to whoever at Microsoft though of this!

And I’m sure there’s a lot more to come – just as I am sure there’s gonna be bugs as well, but for now things look good.
Oh and btw, in case you are looking to buy, here’s a link: