You may have heard some chit chat about Microsoft releasing another new operating system onto the world going by the name of Windows 7. Since its announcement we have been following progress of the development of Windows 7 to see what would be new and different about it, and especially after Windows Vista in our opinion just did not make the grade on so many levels.

Whilst Windows Vista brought so many new features to an operating system its biggest failure by far was the fact that it was extremely resource intensive, sluggish and slow. The fact that Vista was released with such a poor driver support catalogue was a kick in the teeth while you were already down.

Windows 7 is set to change all of this, as Microsoft claim to have learnt from their past mistakes (Vista). We will, so far, give them credit as Windows 7 does feel like a new system. So what has really changed since Vista, as on the outlook Vista and 7 would appear to be the exact same, wouldn't they?

Although the style and feel would appear the same there are, in our opinion, 4 major differences to note between Vista and 7.

1.  New Taskbar

Unlike in the past, the bottom right hand corner used to through instructions and pop ups and balloons at you in every which way possible. This has often been an irritation as half the time you either knew already or it was nothing to worry about. Windows 7 brings around a change which gives you the ability to change the settings to allow or disallow only the required icons you want to display and likewise for notifications. Even the the arrowwhich used to expand to reveal all processes running in the system tray has changed. Instead now you click it for it to reveal a list of running applications.

2.  UAC (UserAccess Control) improvements

For those of you using windows Vista or at least having tried it in the past, one aspect other than speed and the lack of drivers was this annoying dialogue box askingyou to confirm that you give your permission to change this setting, that setting, allow this to be installed and so on. We are off course talking about the UAC. In windowsVista the UAC was over powering needing approval for just about any setting you wanted to change, which would irritateand annoy even the most easy going of us. Off course, you had the ability to turn it off, but considering that this was a security measure designed to help protect against malicious attacks and so on, this action would have made little sense.
Windows 7 has a new improved UAC which is not as over powering or protective as the last. Instead of showing the dialogue box on almost every setting you might change, Windows 7 instead only shows this dialogue box when a major setting is being changed, or an application is being installed. This maintains the quality protection against possible malicious attacks but does not overwhelm the user with these boxes.

3. Peripherals and Drivers

Following the poor driver compatability issues Windows Vista suffered users will be please to hear that Windows 7 has a lot of drivers already built so that all in all there is a wider range of compatability across hardware and peripherals. This on its own is the least we have come to expect after windows 2000 began leading the way and XP really took a hold of it. But Windows 7 goes one step further in firstly trying to use its vast array of drivers, and if by chance it cannot find a suitable driver it will search for it over the internet. If for example we plug in a camera, Windows 7 will install the drivers for you, but then MAY also take you to the manufacturers website where you might have an option of uploading your pictures to an online album.

4. Speed and Performance