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The best 30 features of Windows 7

Posted on 13 Jan 2009 at 14:51

7. Drag andsnap windows

Today's large widescreen displays are perfect for comparing documents side by side, but resizing two Windows to fit on the same screen in XP or Vista is a faff. Windows 7 makes it a cinch: drag one window to the far left, the other to the right, and the two fit snugly together like old ladies on the bus.

Windows can be dragged into action in other ways, too. Pull a window to the top of the screen and it's automatically maximised. Pull it back down from the top, and the window returns to its original size. Such gesture-like controls quickly become second nature, practically sending the "maximise" and "restore" controls to the dole queue.

8. Location-aware printing

Anyone used to ferrying a laptop between work and home will be familiar with the tedium of thoughtlessly pressing in the office, only to find Word struggling to find the home inkjet that's set as default. In Windows 7, the PC automatically detects when you're at home and at work when you connect to the network, and automatically selects the relevant printer. It's the little things...

9. UAC silencer

Windows chief Steven Sinofsky has admitted that Vista's User Account Control had proved as popular as the village serial killer. The show-stopping interruptions are now completely under user control, with a sliding scale of UAC setting that ranges from turning the security "feature" off completely, to notifications every time a piece of software raises an eyebrow at your settings.

10. Media streamer playback

Windows Media Player now includes the option to play back music on other networked devices in the home, not only the PC you're sat in front of. So, for example, you could be sitting in the lounge with a laptop and select a music track to play back through a media-streaming device with its own dedicated speakers, instead of your tinny laptop affairs.

11. Revamped Taskbar and jumplists

Replacing the Taskbar window tabs with large, chunky icons isn't big, clever, nor particularly innovative - Apple's Mac OS X Dock and the KDE interface have been doing this for donkey's years. Sometimes, however, "borrowing" ideas from others is better than attempting to reinvent the wheel, and our experience of the new Windows 7 interface shows that Microsoft was right to flatter its rivals with a little imitation.

Not only are the bigger icons more finger-friendly for those running Windows 7 on a touchscreen PC, they also conceal the new "jumplists". Accessible through a right-click (or an upwards swipe of the finger) on the Taskbar icon, the jumplists spring out to reveal a bevy of handy shortcuts that are tailored to that particular application. These might be recently opened documents in Word, music player controls in Windows Media Player, or a link to open the privacy mode in Internet Explorer, for example.

Jumplists are also available from programs listed in the Start menu, witha pop-up box appearing to the right.

And, at long last, Microsoft has finally made it possible to drag and drop the Taskbar icons into the order you wish, without having to download the TweakUI PowerToy.

12. HomeGroup

With the average household now containing multiple PCs according to Microsoft, home networking is heading towards the mainstream. HomeGroup should help make it easier. After setting up your HomeGroup on your first Windows 7 PC, any new Windows 7 machine that's connected to the home network will be automatically detected and enrolled into the HomeGroup.