The coming of Windows7

I have always been an avid and 'loyal' Microsoft user since Windows for Workgroup.

I have followed the progression of various flavor and versions of Windows since then. Probably, the only workstation Windows OS that never appealed to me is Vista, and its sidekick, Office 2007.

Vista is such a process and memory hungry OS that i promptly reformatted my laptop and replaced it with XP.

Maybe the murmurings against Vista has become so loud that Microsoft decided to start hyping since last year the 'ultimate' Windows OS -- Windows 7. According to reports, Microsoft's Bill Gates supposedly said that Windows 7 is developed with the user in mind.

But reading the reported 'new features' and features you will not find in Windows 7 makes me think Bill Gates wants us to lose control of our computer system.

Where Windows XP is probably the most user-friendly and the easiest to handle among Windows OS, it looks to that the Windows 7 will be is exact opposite.

Like Vista, Windows 7 is more on graphical and visual - shock and awe, kind of system, designed to make even the most devoted Mac users to blink twice upon looking at the Windows 7 desktop functions. The desktop and the internet browser has merged.
















Like Longhorn before, there are now downloadable 'skins' or 'overlay' for Windows 7. And there is now downloadable beta versions of Windows 7. If you are geeky enough to install it.

Anyways, my friend Wiki has this to say about the vauntd new features of Windows 7:

There are many features new to Windows 7, including advancements in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, support for additional file formats, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.

But i am more interested on the features that will no longer be in Windows 7:

Windows Shell

The file transfer dialogs for copying, moving or deleting do not show the actual file name which is being copied, moved or deleted at that instant.

Active Desktop functionality has been removed. As a result, animated GIF files can no longer be set as the desktop background. No other dynamic web content such as HTML or HTA files can run on the desktop, although Windows DreamScene (released only for Windows Vista Ultimate) allows using videos as the background and dynamic web content can run as part of Sidebar gadgets.

The File Types tab has been removed from Folder Options. This feature was available from Windows 95 up to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The File Types tab allowed users to change the file associations for various types of files.

The configuration tab to quickly associate with media file types has also been removed from Windows Media Player 11 options in Windows Vista.

It is not possible to override AutoPlay by pressing the SHIFT key as was possible in previous versions, though it can still be disabled through Control Panel.

AutoPlay settings cannot be configured per-device; they are set globally.

It is not possible to list fonts by similarity based on PANOSE information or hide font variations such as Bold, Italic etc in the Fonts folder.

Menus cannot be set to slide anymore using the user interface. Only the fade effect is available.

The taskbar cannot be dragged to the bottom of the screen to hide it manually.

Toolbars such as "Quick Launch" can no longer be "dragged off" the taskbar as floating minibars or docked to another edge of the screen, though physical folders can be dragged onto the desktop edge in a similar manner. The Language Bar is the only toolbar that can float on the desktop.

It is no longer possible to copy text fragments and other similar objects from a document, and paste them to a folder as a file (called a scrap, but actually an OLE object).

Windows Explorer

It is not possible to display the full path in the title bar when Aero Glass is enabled. When Aero Glass is disabled, the full path can be displayed in the title bar. The full path can be shown in the address bar regardless of the status of Aero, by clicking to the right of the breadcrumbs or pressing Alt+D.

The Toolbar button in Explorer to go up one folder from the current folder has been removed.

This is now accomplished by selecting a folder in the breadcrumbs bar or by pressing together Alt + Up keys.

The ability to customize the standard toolbar's layout and buttons was removed.

Users can no longer make the menu above all other toolbars.

Ability to add a password to a zip file (compressed folder) has been removed. (This has no effect on third-party compression tools, such as WinZip or 7Zip.)

The Common Tasks pane (renamed 'Favorite Links') and the Details pane can be removed only through the 'Organize' button.

Filmstrip view is replaced by the icon view feature which supports multiple sizes, and a new full-screen slideshow mode.

The ability to view and edit metadata stored in a file's secondary stream through the "Summary" tab of the file's "Property" dialog was removed.

The Web Publishing Wizard is no longer available.

Support for enabling a folder for web sharing with Internet Information Services via the Windows Explorer interface was removed.

The Desktop Cleanup Wizard is no longer available.

The "Computer Description" field is no longer shown on the Explorer view of a workgroup.

The Status bar no longer shows the total space used by a folder when displaying a folder's contents or free space remaining on the disk.

The drive mapping dialog box no longer allows a network path to be mapped without assigning a local drive letter to it.

It is no longer possible to add a background to folders via a desktop.ini.

It is not possible to view the Properties of an item in the left pane of Windows Explorer using Alt+Enter.

It is not possible to turn off autorefresh/autosorting of files and folders.

There are limitations to opening multiple files in a single operation, i.e. by selecting multiple files and pressing enter. The "Open" operation is not present in the context menu when multiple files are selected.

Internet Explorer

The ability to customize the toolbar layout is removed. The position of the address bar and the 'command bar' cannot be readjusted.

Internet Explorer is no longer integrated with Windows Explorer. This can also be seen in Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Image toolbar has been removed. Most of the commands that were on this floating toolbar—Save Picture, E-mail Picture, Set as Background, etc—are now in the context menu that appears when an image is right-clicked.

Offline Favorites, a feature that automatically synchronized and stored web pages for later perusal when not online, was removed in favor of using RSS feeds.

The maximum size for the "Temporary Internet Files" folder (downloaded files cache) is limited to 1024 MB in Internet Explorer 7. This is also true for Internet Explorer 7 on other Windows versions.

For more info, click here.

New Features.

Removed features.

Windows 7 Reviews:

- Microsoft Windows 7 site
- First look at Windows 7's User Interface
- Microsoft Windows 7 / Windows Vienna