Getting used to Windows 7

 (Post is under construction)

So I got my copy of Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit a little while ago and have been exploring it and have been looking for some things to compliment my new system so I thought would I share my experience on getting started on the new Windows and maybe you find it useful.

First of all I'm positively surprised as to how well this already works so early after its release. On my system it runs and feels noticeably faster and smoother than Windows XP 32-Bit. I have never bothered with Vista but I imagine that a change from Vista would show performance improvement as well. Compatibility so far hasn't really been much of an issue either. All my devices work and I got any program and game working that I have tried so far. The only real issue I have is that Windows 7 sometimes doesn't want to shut down completely which I suspect is one of the old 32 bit drivers not properly reacting to the shutdown instructions (Edit: Actually it turned out to be my WLAN device not having proper drivers). You probably won't even run into that one of course because you'd likely run different device drivers and software than me.

I'll be honest and say that in the time when I only saw previews of Windows 7 from various people I wasn't happy about the design it seemed to have. At least in the videos of those testers I recall seeing that on the taskbar there were big, fat, shiny, "web 2.0" buttons which just looked ugly and like trying so hard to imitate the look of Mac systems I guess. (Perhaps the previews I had seen ran on a low resolution which blew up the taskbar a lot while not using the "small symbols" option. I don't remember the exact look anymore. I'm simply stating my first impression as it was then.) I hated it and I hoped for the ability to switch to an efficient Win95/98 like design to get that cheap looking shiny stuff out of my face. (Which by the way you can if you desire.)

I also worried that the application thumbnails (which display even video and 3D graphics running live within them) and the said shiny desktop design would eat away at performance like back when Windows Media Player went from 6.4 to 7.0 and instead of a simple window that played just the video anymore, they added that shiny big frame which noticeably sucked away graphic performance on the hardware I had in those days for no other reason than to look shiny.

..However, now that I have the release version and running it on my monitor's native resolution the taskbar and buttons are nicely subtle actually. The only shiny round button is the Windows symbol and the applications use their normal little icons with subtle selection effects and as I said, Windows 7 actually performs faster and more smoothly on my hardware even with the Aero desktop and its effects. (It is possible to switch to a Windows 7 theme that doesn't use Aero by the way if graphic performance does happen to be an issue for you.)

The interface changes are also handy and a pleasant change. (Again keep in mind that I've skipped on Vista so if anything was a feature included in Vista already then I don't know of it and so I'm comparing to the XP system.)
You probably have heard about the mouse gestures for the control of windows already. You can maximize a window by grabbing it and pulling the cursor up against the top edge of the screen and likewise undocking the window will return it back to former size. You can also dock windows to the left and right in the same way which makes each take up half the screen. Oh and of course wiggling a window you've grabbed will minimize all other windows and repeating it will bring them back up, which is nice if you quickly want to get stuff out of your face to focus. It's handy I think even though I still have to get myself used to actually using the mouse gesture feature more often.

The visual design pleases me as it keeps everything looking very integrated and unobtrusive. For example remember me bitching up there about how the media player versions since 6.4 have gotten so clunky with their shiny design. Well that's thankfully gone in the version that comes with Windows 7! It is once again nothing but an effective slim window that plays video (the media management can be switched to by the click of a button) and when it plays an audio file it even changes into a small (but resizable) window by itself since you don't need a big scale window to listen to music after all. I like that.

I like the new features for file management as well. The libraries (I hope that's the term in the English release) help having all your media available in a convenient quickly accessible place even when stored in different folders (as I recall right now), the search is quick and surely very handy to keep order when utilizing the filters and all (which I haven't yet), ohh and when you rename a file it will automatically select just the text before the extension so unless you want to change the file type it saves you having to go and select the name with your mouse tediously every time you just want to change the name. Nifty

So yes I'm pleased with my new Windows. Faster on my hardware, effective design and hardly any compatibility issues. (I did keep my Windows XP installation on a separate partition just in case but I don't really seem to need it. You can find guides on how to preserve your XP for dualboot though like this one for example: "How to install Windows XP over Windows 7 in a dual-boot" .)



Anyhow, now the we got that pseudo review out of the way lets get to things I personally found good or essential additions to my new system. I may add to this list over time. We'll see.

•  Windows 7 Codecs

This is a codec pack that aims to add support for video and audio codecs not natively included with Windows 7 while not messing with existing codec setups to prevent bugs, as well as not requiring a certain player to work. Any player that uses directshow to render video supports these codecs.
For more info and the download visit the homepage of Shark007 at http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html

•  Disable Taskbar Always On Top

This is something I find a flaw in the new design and I assume the choice to always keep the taskbar pop up into foreground was made so less tech-savvy people would not miss on notifications of Windows and their applications, but I still think they should have kept the option to uncheck this behavior. When I'm in Second Life for example and receive an IM on my instant messenger the taskbar pops up in front of the buttons of Second Life and gets in the way. Now I don't want to put my taskbar onto another edge on the screen, I just want it to stay in the background.

After unsuccessfully looking for a checkbox or even a registry setting I have had a look around and found this little program someone has written to force the taskbar into background anyhow. http://www.csparks.com/Win7TaskbarMasher/

•  Fences (desktop icon management)

This is something I came across while looking for tweaks for my new Windows and I think it's something handy to have since the default icon placement still isn't too comfortable to manage. What fences will do is create variably translucent boxes which you can name and sort your icons into which you can then place on your desktop freely. I have grouped mine into fences for system tools, applications and games for example to separate them. Also with a double-click on empty space of the desktop you can hide and show the icons to have a clean desktop.
I'm using the free version and I haven't experienced any issues with it. Give it a shot if you like at http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/