Windows 7 through the eyes of a real person – Day 3

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Libraries:

Libraries looked like an interesting feature from what I’d seen PDC’ers saying and they sure are great Libraries help bring together files of the same type, even if they’re in disparate locations. I’m a terrible On-PC filer (as my co-workers can attest) as I’m always creating new folders to save things to and then filling those full of sub-folders and so on; plus when I “tidy up” I tend to just dump all those files into another newly created file…so this makes things a lot easier for me & anyone who needs to find something on my machine when I’m not around!

My Music library brings together all the “iTunes”, “Newly ripped (Nov 07), “Newly purchased May 08″ etc folders into one central location so I can see all the media of that type in one place. I say “one type” but it has collected MP3’s, WMA’s and M4A’s without an issue…and has done the same for the 1000’s of pictures too, all in the Pictures library.

It’s things like this that really show that MS thought about who will be using this OS and how they will be using it. They make using Windows a more enjoyable, intuitive and fun experience, which I believe, is what it’s all about.

Now I’ve had a look at those it’s on to general “wandering around” and clicking on stuff for a while. I open up IE8 and check out Twitter-no problems at all, although the text looks a bit weird...I think the resolution might be wrong. This is one of those things that I can never quite remember where you have to go to change this so I’m ready for a bit of a hunt around this new OS. Right click on desktop and whoa...it’s right there! One of the menu options is “Screen Resolution” so I just click that, choose the right resolution and I’m done-I like it J

Check out Control panel, that all looks in order...I can still find the usual suspects like Uninstall a Program, Updates etc-definitely a good idea to keep these things easily accessible to make the transition as easy as possible.

All of a sudden I notice that the Show Desktop icon is missing from the startbar...this could be an issue, I use that a LOT...I can’t start minimizing all the windows when I want to see my desktop...hmmm, why have they done this?!

This brings my night of Windows 7 exploration to a timely but slightly downbeat end. I do think it’s odd that they’ve removed the “Show Desktop” facility but on balance, that’s a minor loss compared to the great additions.

 

The Windows 7 beta is only available until the 10th February to download, so get your copy now !

To get more information on Windows 7, check out the following resources: