Windows 7 gets the basics right. Here's what you need to know
about the new OS.
Harry McCracken, PC World
Monday, October 19, 2009 2:00 pM


The Windows experience occurs mainly in its Taskbar ?
especially in the Start menu and System Tray. Vista gave the
Start menu a welcome redesign; in Windows 7, the Taskbar and
the System Tray get a thorough makeover.

Windows 7's revamped Taskbar introduces several new
features and gives users much more control over how it looks.

The new Taskbar replaces the old small icons and text
labels for running apps with larger, unlabeled icons. If you can
keep the icons straight, the new design painlessly reduces
Taskbar clutter. If you don't like it, you can shrink the icons
and/or bring the labels back.

In the past, you could get one-click access to programs
by dragging their icons to the Quick Launch toolbar. Windows 7
eliminates Quick Launch and folds its capabilities into the
Taskbar. Drag an app's icon from the Start menu or desktop to
the Taskbar, and Windows will pin it there, so you can launch
the program without rummaging around in the Start menu. You
can also organize icons in the Taskbar by moving them to new
positions.

To indicate that a particular application on the Taskbar is
running, Windows draws a subtle box around its icon ?
subtle, in fact, that figuring out [CONJUNCTION] the app is
running can take a moment, especially if its icon sits between
two icons for running apps.

In Windows Vista, hovering the mouse pointer over an
application's Taskbar icon produces a thumbnail window view
known as a Live Preview. But when you have multiple windows
open, you see only one preview at a time. Windows 7's version of this feature is slicker and more efficient: Hover the pointer on
an icon, and thumbnails of the app's windows glide into position
above the Taskbar, so you can quickly find the one you're
looking for. (The process would be even simpler if the
thumbnails were larger and easier to decipher.)

Also new in Windows 7's Taskbar is a feature called
Jump Lists. These menus resemble the context-sensitive ones
you get when you right-click within various Windows
applications, except that you don't have to be inside an app to
use them. Internet Explorer 8's Jump List, for example, lets you
open the browser and load a fresh tab, initiate an InPrivate
stealth browsing session, or go directly to any of eight frequently
visited Web pages. Non-Microsoft apps can offer Jump Lists,
too, if their developers follow the guidelines for creating
them.

Other Windows 7 interface adjustments are minor, yet so
sensible that you may wonder why Windows didn't include them
all along. Shove a window into the left or right edge of the
screen and it'll expand to fill half of your desktop. Nudge another
into the opposite edge of the screen, and it'll expand to occupy
the other half. That makes comparing two windows' contents
easy. If you nudge a window into the top of the screen, it will
maximize to occupy all of the display's real estate.
(Adapted from
http://www.pcworld.com/article/172602/windows_7_review.html)