Few can have escaped the news that Microsoft has released a new version of Windows. And, after the disastrous Vista, both hopes and expectations are high. Find out what we thought about Windows 7 in our review.

You might, however, be wondering quite what all the fuss is about. Even if Windows 7 does not cause the same problems as Vista did, doesn’t that make it a new, expensive way to get an operating system that is only as good as Windows XP? Take a tour of Windows 7 and discover our top 10 reasons both XP and Vista users should upgrade.

Taskbar redesign
The best and biggest changes to Windows 7 affect the part of Windows that is used the most: the Taskbar. We used this in XP and Vista to switch between opening programs and launching new ones from the Start Menu and Quick Launch area. With Windows 7 it has been redesigned to cut out the clutter, organise dozens of windows neatly and give you instant access to the programs you need.

The most obvious change can be found just to the right of the Start button. At first glance you might think Quick Launch has grown to huge proportions, but it has in fact been removed. In its place you will find large icons for programs – Internet Explorer, Libraries and the Media Player, by default – that have been pinned to the Taskbar.

Like a program in the Quick Launch, clicking one of these icons once will launch the program. In
Windows 7, though, an open program will not create a new button. Instead the button appears around the icon itself. This saves space and keeps your favourite programs in the same place for simple access when switching windows.

Windows 7 also saves space by using only one button per program, no matter how many windows it has opened, unless you tell it otherwise.

Best of all, the list of programs pinned to the Taskbar is yours and yours alone to control. Programs cannot install themselves here, so you will not end up with the glut of icons that often plagued Quick Launch – only the few you choose to keep close at hand.

The new Taskbar also makes it easier to monitor running programs. Hover the mouse over a button and a small preview, called a ‘Peek’ window, will appear showing what that program is doing and if it has several windows open a preview of each will pop up. Moving the mouse over these small previews shows the window and clicking one selects it for use. This feature is missing from the very cheap Starter edition of Windows 7 that is sold on some low-price computers.

The Start menu will look familiar to Vista users, but it is leagues ahead of the one in XP. Programs are organised neatly with the most recently used ones to hand, while the search box will find programs, documents and emails in seconds – not the minutes or hours XP takes to find files.

Icon management
On the far-right of the Taskbar you will find another part of Windows that has been removed to make it tidier. The Notification Area was designed for tools and programs that needed to update the user with information, but became a favourite place for software developers to hide icons that merely just took up space.

Neither XP or Vista included an effective way to keep these pesky icons at bay, but Windows 7 starts out by assuming there is very little you want to see. Most icons are hidden as standard and a simple customisation tool makes it easy to choose which should be seen always, which should be always hidden and which are allowed into view when they have something to tell you.