It's finally here! Windows 7, OEM, has been released. After months of public beta testing, Microsoft has produced the finest OS to date. Combining user-friendliness with speed, aesthetics, and pure awesomeness, 7 surpasses all others. The founding philosophy of 7 is simple: make it easy for the user to do as much as possible with as few clicks as possible. This Microsoft has done.

I recently installed my copy of 7 Home Premium and have been toying around with it. Microsoft has three builds of the product, each with an increasing number of features.

Let me highlight a few of the newest features unique to 7:

1. AeroSnap
          I see AeroSnap being particularly useful to students because of the way it lets you easily view two windows in parallel. Say, a web browser with Wikipedia open and a research paper due tomorrow. Why do this? I mean, in prior OSs, you could just resize the windows to both fit. But it was a pain in the neck to do. AeroSnap works in the three ways: left, right, and top. Drag a window to the left side of the screen and it will "snap" to fill half of the screen. Drag it away and it resumes its former size. Drag a window to the top, and it will maximize to fill the whole screen. Drag it away, and again, back to the former size. See this below:

Definitely useful for a side-by-side comparison of any two windows.

2. AeroPeek
          What if you want to look at your desktop really quickly? In the old system, you had to either manually minimize each window, or press Windows+D to quickly minimize them all. 7 has the addition of AeroPeek, a useful command that makes all currently open windows glass-like and transparent, instantly providing a view of the desktop. Windows+Space is the shortcut here. Additionally, there is a little rectangle button that will turn on AeroPeek when hovered, and minimize all when clicked.

3. TaskBar
          The Windows TaskBar underwent some major changes between Vista and 7. Sure, there are a few basic ideas that were implemented in Vista, but perfected in 7. Instead of long, rectangular tabs for programs, the TaskBar was thickened a little and small boxes are used. These help keep the TaskBar cleaned up. Additionally, similar windows are grouped. By hovering over the tab, you get thumbnail previews of the window(s) before opening it. Just click on the one you want to open, or click the red X to close it.
Additionally, programs like iTunes or WMP have media control buttons on the thumbnail preview.

5. Scalable Performance
          Vista was renown as a resource hog, requiring a minimum of 1GB RAM to operate smoothly. This disappointed a large number of people who upgraded their older machines and found that it ran sslloowwllyy at best. Annoying? Yes. 7 has the unique ability to scale back its overall performance based on the amount of RAM that is available to it. If a user has 512MB, 7 will run fine. If a user has 16GB, it will run AWESOME. Additionally, 7 only uses its video memory for windows that are currently maximized and running. All other programs are kept off of the video memory until needed. This means a faster boot, quicker performance, and more streamlined processing.

6. Compatibility
          One of the greatest challenges Microsoft faces when developing its OS is making it compatible with the millions of third-party programs that are out there. People complain about how buggy Windows is and that it crashes all the time (not 7!) but really, this is because of third-party software that is buggy and causes Windows to crash. Right now, nearly everything that was compatible with Vista will run better on 7. Some third-party software won't be compatible until the software's developers update it, or release patches or drivers. I haven't had any compatibility problems with 7 yet though.

My take? I love it. Can't wait to see how it performs over the next few months/years.

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Protecting the Village,

Brian Jones

Well..........I have departed from PA, sadly. I had such a great time; I'm so glad that I was able to spend that month there. But now I am back in Texas, though actually at Family Camp in Big Sandy, waiting for my family to arrive. I decided (crazily) to drive over-night from Indy to Big Sandy, and thank the Lord, I made it.

Of course, the long night hours are tiresome and boring, so to keep myself occupied, I decided to log on my iPod a little with times as I went. Here, I wrote:

9:52pm leaving SC. Light rain. Fiddling w/GPS.
10:10pm on phone w/ Alicia
11:03pm Terra Haute, IN passed. Beef jerky munching
11:12pm in Illinois.
11:41pm off of phone. Listening to silver chair.
12:00am Sunday! 698 miles to go
12:06am Effingham, IL
12:19am switched off headlights for a sec. Drove by bright moonlight.
12:27am looking at Jupiter. Saw a shooting star. Made a wish.
12:34am crossed into Central timezone.
11:50pm stopping for gas and a quick nap.
1:40am on the road again. Can see Orion in the east sky.
2:55am started passively watching National Treasure
3:19am crossed Mississippi river. In MO now
4:32am Arkansas. Bored right now.
5:05am light rain again. Big bug splat right in my area of the windshield.
5:08am in love w/ cruise control
5:12am playing w/ green laser pointer. Bored.
5:35am stopping for gas
6:30am sky is lightening with dawn. More rain
7:12am nap time
8:00am breakfast @ McDonald's
10:00am Hope, AR birthplace of Bill Clinton
10:20am still raining
10:31am Texas!
10:48am wow, bar ditches full of water
11:19am M&Ms
1:00pm Big Sandy
1:15pm arrived at family camp. Yay...

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So there you have it. I'm pretty tired, but managed to find WiFi here at the main convention center. And it's still raining tons. I'm glad we have a pop-up camper.

Protecting the Village,

Brian Jones