Windows 7 is Microsoft’s latest update to its line of operating systems.  It has been called by many, “What Vista should have been.”  The object of this post will be to give an overview of the new OS, some how to video instruction and some commentary provided by me on what I see as something interesting from each video clip.  I will provide the commentary, and the videos will come from other sources.  In this manner, you should get the most information in the shortest amount of time.

Windows 7 is Microsoft’s latest update to its line of operating systems.  It has been called by many “What Vista should have been.”  The object of this post will be to give an overview of the new OS, some how to video instruction and some commentary provided by me on what I see as something interesting from each video clip.  I will provide the commentary, and the videos will come from other sources.  In this manner, you should get the most information in the shortest amount of time.

The next few videos are from the butterscotch web site and the author is Michael “Doc” Calahan.  These were released in 2009 and they seem to have a lot of good content in them.  Since  I am not going to show all these, you can click on this link to go to the Guided Tour of Windows 7 at butterscotch’s website.

The first one is an overview of Windows 7. 

The main item I think you should get from this clip is that Microsoft has tried to make the new OS snappier and better performing.  One of the biggest complaints that most of us had with Vista was the speed.  You had to have a killer machine to run it really well.  The other problem that I agree with Doc on, is the fact that there were too many options when you went to a menu, regular or contextual.  I think maybe Microsoft saw this problem and streamlined the interface to improve the user experience.

My spin on this clip is that those who like the Fluent Interface and Ribbon that is used in Office 2007 will be very happy, those of us who don’t, will most likely get a new third party application to replace WordPad and Paint.  I think that Microsoft didn’t talk to everyone on this, otherwise they would have incorporated a hybrid with menus as well as the Ribbon.  This would have been the best of both worlds, but I guess we can’t have everything, right?

I am not sure why the preview for the next video looks this way but it IS a windows tutorial - maybe Doc was running Windows 7 in BootCamp or Parallels on a Mac - I don’t know for certain.  I personally do a lot of my PC testing on my Mac - it is easier to clean up afterwards and is usually more stable than generic PC hardware.

Simple security does overcome the problem that Vista had with its “control freak” security.  The security stuff in Vista irritated me - and I am a System Admin!  It is good that Microsoft realizes that security is important, and it is to everyone’s advantage that they have applied common sense here.  I think it is a good thing and a step in the right direction - make the OS more user-friendly.

What I find good in this clip is the fact that Windows 7 has gotten some of the functionality in its taskbar that Apple had with the Dock in OS X.  I personally used the QuickLaunch part of the TaskBar and to make it where I can just drop a program or folder there for easy access makes sense.  This also will be of great benefit to those who use the Mac and PC every day - similarities between Operating Systems make it possible to work faster.  Thanks for this one, Microsoft.

One of the biggest problems that I have seen with Microsoft’s networking, is the tendency to make it very confusing for the home user.  With HomeGroups, this is much better.  The home user is not buried in technical stuff, is allowed to select what he or she wants to share, and has a sharing password generated for them.  This should save Microsoft a few thousand tech support calls a year...

The concept behind the jump list is something that makes sense in any OS - make your recent documents available to the user to simplify his/her workflow.  The recent items on the Mac have spoiled me, this new functionality in Windows will spoil Windows 7 users in the same way - with more productivity.

I tend to agree with Doc.  Windows 7 in beta was good.  The overall user experience is better than Vista, which a lot of us felt was a flop.  I think that for a new Operating System to be this stable in the beta was a very good sign.  In my next blog on Windows 7, I will dig deeper into the question - Does Windows 7 deliver what we anticipated from the beta version?  Since the product has been out a while I should be able to get lots of feedback on it that I will summarize for you, the consumer.