Microsoft Windows 7

Almost three years have passed since the arrival of Microsoft Windows Vista, and it's fair to say that the sixth version of the Windows operating system wasn’t popular with every PC user.

After problems with hardware that didn't work and complaints about the User Account Control security tool (see below), many home computer users chose to stick with the older Windows XP instead.

So with its replacement Windows 7 has Microsoft finally got it right?

Windows 7 system requirements
When it launched, Windows Vista was criticised for having unreasonable system requirements that meant some of its features were not available on all PCs. On paper, the basic requirements for Vista and Windows 7 are nearly identical – both require a 1GHz processor and 1GB of memory.

In practice, however, Windows 7 did seem leaner. We recommend at least 2GB of memory for Windows Vista computers to avoid sluggish performance, and when small simple 'netbook' laptops suddenly became popular Microsoft convinced manufacturers to install Windows XP on them, not the more power-hungry Vista.

Wth Windows 7, however, we found that even the Ultimate edition installed and ran happily on a netbook computer with 1GB of memory and one of Intel's low-power Atom processors. Windows 7 was also significantly quicker to start up than Vista, and returned from Sleep mode in seconds.

But what about all the extra products and programs that just didn't work with Vista? When it comes to hardware the news isn't so bright. The inner workings of Windows 7 have more in common with Windows Vista than with XP, so any old products whose manufacturers still haven't released updated drivers since Windows XP are not likely to fare better with Windows 7. Software is less of a problem: we found that everything we ran in XP and Vista worked first time in Windows 7.

What's new?
Windows 7 should work on any PC that can handle Vista, and many more besides, including even the cheapest laptops. But what exactly do those who choose to upgrade get, and are the new features worth it? At first the Windows 7 desktop isn't much different from the one in Windows Vista. Start using it, though, and you notice a few clever changes. The most important of these affect the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen.

With both XP and Vista the Taskbar could quite quickly become cluttered. The Quick Launch bar took up space at the left side, and the notification area on the right would soon become full of icons as more and more programs insisted on installing themselves there. With Windows 7, things have been cleaned up.

The Quick Launch bar is gone – instead, favourite programs can be 'pinned' to the left of the Taskbar, allowing them to be started with one click. Run one and Windows doesn't create a new button on the Taskbar: instead, the pinned icon becomes a button. Even if a program has several windows open, it appears only once. The Notification Area is tamed, too: unless you choose otherwise, most programs’ icons are hidden. A little flag appears should anything need attention.

The new Taskbar also makes it easier to find and move between open programs and windows. Hover the mouse over an item there and a preview of its window, or windows, pops up above – click this and it will appear for use. After a few days using this system we began to wonder how we would managed without it.

There are a few other changes to the way windows are used, too. In particular, it's now far easier to quickly rearrange windows: drag one to the top of the screen and it expands to full size, for example, or drag it to the side and it'll fill one half of the screen. This is particularly good for widescreen computers. And if you happen to own a touchscreen computer, Windows 7 will support it without any extra software required.