The first thing you notice when booting up Win7 is the new interface. The Taskbar and System Tray are cleaner by default, and even little things such as moving icons around are dramatically improved by little tool-tips that pop up and let you know what will happen if you release the mouse button at any given time.

The Taskbar may look extremely basic, but that’s because it now hides all its power until you really need it. For example, when you open several Web pages in Internet Explorer, the Taskbar doesn’t fill up with separate tabs for each page as it did in Vista. Instead, hovering the mouse over the Internet Explorer icon on the Taskbar opens either a thumbnail preview of images for each page or a list of pages (depending on how many sites are open at once), which you can then click to choose among them. It also is possible to close windows and tabs directly from this list instead of from the program window. Taskbar icons work much differently now, too. Adding a program shortcut places the program’s icon in the Taskbar so you can click the icon to launch the software, as was the case in the past using Quick Launch. (Of course, you can still add a shortcut to the Desktop, too.) Now, however, once the icon is clicked, it is highlighted to show that the program is running instead of generating a separate tab on the Taskbar. Some icons even serve triple-duty by showing progress bars inside them when you download files. All of this adds up to tremendous space savings on the Taskbar, letting you keep plenty of oft-used shortcuts handy at all times.

Adding items to the Taskbar (called “pinning”) is very easy. Just right-click an icon, click Pin To Taskbar, and the item is automatically added. You can also open the Start menu and drag and drop a program icon to position it wherever you want on the Taskbar. Some items, such as folders, can be pinned to the Windows Explorer icon on the Taskbar, providing an excellent way to clear clutter from the Desktop but still have instant access to folders you frequently open. Just tuck the folder away somewhere, pin it to Explorer, and you have one-click access directly from the Taskbar thanks to another great new feature called Jump Lists. Jump Lists appear when you right-click a Taskbar icon. They provide custom context menus that vary from program to program. Jump Lists are much different from the fixed context menu that appears when you right-click a typical icon. They contain shortcuts to files, actions, and other aspects of a program that you have worked on recently. They also include entries for things you tend to access or work on a lot. For example, the Internet Explorer 8 Jump List has shortcuts to quickly open frequently accessed Web pages, start an InPrivate Browsing session, or open a new tab. If your Desktop is cluttered with icons pertaining to all of the current projects you’re working on, Jump Lists can help keep all that stuff at your fingertips but contain it within the Taskbar.

All of these enhancements combine to make the Taskbar much more useful once you master all the little tricks such as pinning and Jump Lists. Also, Taskbar icons are large by default, which is very useful for those using a touchscreen PC, but it’s easy to make them small if you want to fit a lot of programs on the Taskbar. To do so, Click an empty portion of the Taskbar and click Properties. Select the Taskbar tab and check the Use Small Icons box before clicking Apply.

Aero Improvements

Aero, the translucent glass appearance that made Vista look so pretty relative to WinXP, has evolved into something useful in Win7. It is much easier to activate and modify Aero than was the case in Vista, and several default themes are included that can be turned on with a single click. Aero Peek is one major new feature that is activated by hovering the mouse pointer over a little bar to the right of the System Tray. This makes all open windows transparent so you only see their outlines, letting you view icons on the Desktop and easily access Gadgets that are installed but obscured by open windows.

Aero Snap is another time-saving feature. It lets you move and resize windows without clicking buttons (although the buttons are still there if you want to use them). For example, to maximize a window, you can grab the top bar with the mouse pointer, drag the window to the top of the screen, and when it hits the top of the screen, it creates a transparent outline of a maximized window to let you know that it will automatically maximize when the mouse button is released. Similarly, you can do the equivalent of clicking the Restore Down button by grabbing the top bar of the window with the mouse pointer, dragging the window down, and releasing the mouse button. There are several of these handy Aero Snap mouse and keyboard shortcuts that work so well, they make you wonder why Microsoft bothered with the window buttons in the first place.

One of our favorite new features is Aero Shake, which lets you use the mouse to grab the top of an open Window and then shake the mouse back and forth to minimize every window that is open other than the one being shaken. This is a fantastic alternative to simply minimizing all windows and then opening the one you want.

Multimedia Powerhouse

Windows Media Player has improved dramatically throughout the years, and version 12 that ships with Win7 is the best yet. It looks much slicker than previous editions—especially when running in its smaller Now Playing mode. The software now natively plays video files stored in .MOV format, which is a common format output by digital camcorders. When Windows Media Player runs now, it can be controlled directly from the Taskbar by hovering the mouse pointer over the Windows Media Player icon and using the playback buttons that pop up. This makes it easy to access the program when it is buried under a lot of other windows but doesn’t take up a lot of space on the Taskbar like the Vista version of Windows Media Player did when minimized.

One of the best additions to the software is Remote Media Streaming, which lets you store multimedia files on a PC and then share those files over a home network or the Internet with your other Win7 computers. For example, this feature lets you use the free Wi-Fi at the bookstore to stream music or video stored on your desktop PC at home via the Internet so your multimedia can follow you wherever you go.

Windows Media Center gets some slight interface and feature improvements, but nothing like the overhaul Windows Media Player received. Win7 supports DVD playback out of the box and also comes with Windows DVD Maker for creating your own DVDs.

Decrypting Device Manager

Device Stage kicks in when you attach a device such as a printer, digital camera, or digital camcorder to your Win7 computer. Instead of popping up the same old AutoRun menu we saw in Vista and WinXP, it now displays a picture of the exact device you’ve plugged in, and manufacturers can customize the menu to include specific information about your device, such as the amount of recording time left on a camcorder.

Better still, the Devices And Printers folder provides a visual overview of all of the hardware currently attached to your computer, letting you access settings for them by sight instead of by digging for a specific make and model number.

Easier Networking

Windows 7 improves on Windows’ previous stable of networking features dramatically with HomeGroups, which redesigns the networking interface from scratch and makes it much easier to share files and hardware over a network. Just fire up the wizard, check the boxes for the types of files and hardware you wish to share, and a password and HomeGroup are automatically generated. Other Win7 users with the password can then use it to access the HomeGroup and share files as if they were sitting at your computer. You can easily apply filters to exclude certain files or folders and also establish parental settings so that only content with an appropriate rating can be accessed by the computer your children use.

Sharing over a network is also much easier now thanks to the addition of Libraries. These act as a sort of superfolder, combining files from multiple folders in multiple locations into one spot without actually moving the files from their original location. For example, if you have family photos and work photos stored in different locations on your computer, you can create one photo library that lets you easily access all of those photos from a single spot without having to combine the actual files in a single folder. You can also delete a library without deleting any of the files or folders it pointed to, making it easy to experiment.

Tougher Security

A firewall helps secure your Internet connection by making sure all incoming and outgoing data is authorized to come or go, and Windows Firewall was amped a bit by adding the ability to use custom settings for Home, Work, and Public profiles. This is terrific for laptop users who want extra firewall protection while on the road but want to ease up a bit and gain access to more Web sites when they’re back on their home network.

Finally, for those annoyed by the constant pop-up messages Vista generated—particularly security-related false alarms—the new Action Center is almost worth the upgrade all by itself. It lets you completely customize what pop-up balloons you see from Windows and when you see them. The pop-up balloons also contain much more useful information than they did in the past, making it easier to know what you can ignore and what needs to be addressed immediately.

Extra Goodies

Although in many ways Win7 is stripped down relative to Vista, Microsoft has still stuffed it with several notable applications. The Snipping Tool makes it easy to take full screenshots, screenshots of a single window, or to just cut out a little part of the Desktop you want to save as an image. Sticky Notes works just like the name implies, letting you plaster the Desktop with little color-coded reminders.

The new Calculator is very impressive, especially considering what little Microsoft has done to improve it in the past. The interface is very slick and changes depending on options you’ve selected, and Calculator can do anything from statistics to unit conversions to custom worksheets such as mortgage or lease payments.

Windows Sidebar is gone, but all the gadgets you’ve come to love are still here to place wherever you prefer on the Desktop.

Paint and WordPad have improved features, and their interfaces have had major facelifts. They now use an enhanced version of the Ribbon interface Microsoft pioneered for Office 2007, now called the Scenic Ribbon. Neither is as robust as commercial (or even several freeware) graphics editors or word processors, but both are much more useful in Win7 than was the case in the past.

The Need For Speed

The nicest new feature of Win7 is something a screenshot can’t convey. Speed. It is snappy and runs lean enough that you don’t need cutting-edge hardware for great overall performance. Microsoft has cut out a lot of the bloat that bogged down Vista, creating a thoroughly modern operating system that runs as speedily as WinXP, while boasting many more features. In fact, many features that you didn't read about here, including Windows Live Movie Maker, Windows Live Family Safety, and Windows Live Photo Gallery, were only left out because they aren't included by default; they must be downloaded free via the Windows Live Essentials pack. You can learn more about that and other downloadable add-ons in “Windows 7 Add-Ons” on page 58.

Upgrade Anytime

If you read about a feature here that isn’t part of the edition of Win7 you purchased or that came preinstalled on your computer, don’t fret. Win7 incorporates Windows Anytime Upgrade that lets you switch from a lower tier of the product to a higher tier in only a few minutes, and without losing any of the data or installed programs from your current installation. Home Premium is definitely the sweet spot this time around—it has all the major features home users need and only leaves out some fairly powerful tools that are primarily useful for power and business users. No matter what version you get, Win7 is definitely worth it.