Microsoft Windows 7 preview

Windows 7 is nearly upon us; the word is that the first PCs with the new operating system pre-installed could be in the shops in time for Christmas. That would make it a little less than three years since Microsoft brought Vista into the world, promising PC buyers the ‘wow factor’.

Take a look at our free video highlighting the new Windows 7 desktop and some of the operating system's main features.

But Vista has proven to be at least partly a failure. Sales of new PCs with Vista may have broken previous records but that’s more to do with demand for new PCs than love for the software.

The truth behind Vista’s poor reception is that the company promised much and delivered relatively little, which is a shame as some genuinely interesting and useful tools have been overshadowed by a trio of flaws: poor performance; early lack of support for peripherals and software from other companies; and an interface that was a little over-keen to tell users what it was up to.

While many issues were dealt with by the first Vista service pack (a large update that contained fixes and updates for Windows or other programs), Vista has been unable to recover from the blow of so much bad publicity so soon.

So join us as we take a look at what’s new in Windows 7 and consider whether the company has got it right this time.

Warmed-up Windows?
One of the early criticisms of Windows 7 is that it is merely Vista reheated ­ and the critics have a case. Even Microsoft says the architecture (the ‘engine’ of the software) is basically unchanged.

The new features in the version we examined are low key and the company is betting that users would rather have an operating system that’s familiar but smoother and less annoying rather than one that rewrites the Windows rules again.

The truth is that Vista was produced in a bit of a rush, mainly because Microsoft spent years going down the wrong track with a version of Windows built more deeply on something called the .Net (pronounced ‘dot net) Framework, which is a set of tools that was supposed to help companies write very efficient and visually stunning applications for Windows.

For reasons too dull to go into here, that work had to be undone. Further time was spent trying to improve security features in Windows XP as it came under unprecedented attack from hackers and criminals.

This led to XP Service Pack 2 but reduced the resources available to build Vista. With Vista making a belated entrance, one significant consequence was that manufacturers of peripherals did not have enough time to ensure their devices would work with it properly.

Another Vista problem is the security feature called User Account Control (UAC), which is on by default. This is widely disliked because it prompts the user with lots of annoying messages when they perform certain tasks or try to install and update applications.

The real purpose of User Account Control is to solve a long-standing Windows problem, which is that it did not properly separate system files, application files, and user data, making it unsecure and hard to manage.

Although Microsoft long ago laid down guidelines intended to fix this, too many software companies ignored them, and even some Microsoft applications do not behave as they should. UAC solves most of those problems, though there can still be compatibility problems.

The bottom line is that while UAC is a really important evolution for Windows, for the user it is nothing more than annoying; it is seen as a burden rather than a benefit. Windows 7 reduces the impact of UAC on the user while preserving most of its value, although the success of this will only become apparent when Windows 7-compatible software starts to appear.