The wow could finally start now
The good-looking treats aren't restricted to the taskbar area, either. Users will find that Windows 7 has been refined throughout, and there's an arsenal of pleasing toys to play with. Vista's development time may have been spent largely on re-writing the subsystem, but it's clear to see that the team behind Windows 7 has had the time to focus on user experience.
Customisation will play a pivotal role in Windows 7, and Themes will make something of a comeback. The built-in personalisation control panel will allow users to create and share themes - which encompass a desktop wallpaper, glass colour, screensaver and sound scheme.
Other Vista features that have failed to live up to expectations have also been re-jigged. Take Gadgets for example, Microsoft has done away with the sidebar allowing for Gadgets to live freely anywhere on the desktop. Handy for users with limited on-screen real estate, but what if you want to see your Gadgets easily? Not a problem, "peek" through the windows at them. It all appears to be very well thought out.
On top of refining what Vista has to offer, there's a selection of new goodies, too. Dragging any window to the top of your screen will maximise it, and taking it to the left or right will snap it to the side and re-size at 50 per cent for easy side-by-side tiling.
There's also greatly-improved support for multiple-monitors, be they landscape or portrait, a revised Media Center, and an option for new interaction via multi-touch. Windows 7's built-in multi-touch functionality will support all the usual tricks such as scrolling through web pages, flicking back and forth, and zooming or rotating with multiple fingers. Vista's impressive speech-recognition functionality ultimately failed to provide a useful everyday alternative to the keyboard and mouse, but Windows 7's touch functionality could prove to be more successful.
Going back to Sinofsky's pledge of improved performance, Windows 7's biggest benefit could be that users upgrading from Vista won't suffer performance degradation as they did when upgrading from XP. It could, in fact, be quite the contrary. Windows 7 is said to be so well refined that users switching from Vista to 7 will notice significant performance improvements on their existing hardware.
Reassuring those with hardware concerns, Sinofsky joyfully claims that his current personal laptop is a 1GHz netbook with 1GB of RAM and Windows 7 as its operating system. When in use, half the system's memory remains free, he says. Should his claims be reflected in the final product, Windows 7 could simultaneously help bring Windows XP and Windows Vista to a close.
From what little we've seen of Windows 7 so far, we'll confidently predict that it'll bring smiles to the faces of the Vista faithful, as well as raise an eyebrow from the XP or Mac-lovin' crowd. Microsoft expects a public beta of Windows 7 to be available in early 2009 and we'll be keeping a partition available in anticipation.
Images provided by the Windows Team blog.
