Get ready for Windows 7

Action stations
The notification area at the right of the Taskbar has also been altered significantly in Windows 7. One problem found in both XP and Vista was that neither operating system included an effective way to clamp down on programs that insisted on living in the Notification Area, often wasting space and flashing up annoying messages.

Windows 7 allows the user to clamp down on both icons and their notifications. It’s even simple to remove the standard System icons (the clock, network indicator, volume control and so on).

The new Action Center, found in the Control Panel, keeps security and maintenance alerts in one place. This is represented in the Notification Area by a single icon; clicking on it brings up a list of current alerts.

Another feature worth noting, but one that’s effectively invisible unless you know how to use it, is Aero Snap. This hidden tool makes it easy to rearrange windows. Grab a window and drag it to the side of the screen and Aero Snap resizes it to fill that half of the display.

Similarly, grabbing and dragging to the top maximises the window, while extending the top of a window to hit the top of the display will automatically extend the bottom downwards, producing a vertically maximised window.

Control freaks
One part of Windows Vista that many users wished could be less obtrusive was User Account Control (UAC). Designed to provide a warning about important changes to the computer, some users found this prompt so annoying they preferred to disable it, and its security benefits, entirely.

UAC is still present in Windows 7, but with far more control over what causes alerts and how they are displayed.

Windows 7 includes four levels of UAC alerting, ranging from no alerts at all to a setting similar to Vista. By default it will prompt when programs attempt to change the computer’s settings, but not when the user does ­ a clear concession to the users who found themselves shouting “of course I want to do that, I just asked you to!” at the Vista desktop.

This standard level of alerting will suit many users, but it’s easy to change. In fact, in the first public beta version of Windows 7 the UAC setting itself could be changed without triggering a UAC prompt ­ this has been fixed in the latest Release Candidate version, in order to prevent malware surreptitiously disabling UAC to mask its actions.

Brought to book
Taskbar icons aside, perhaps the largest and most visible change in Windows 7 is the Libraries feature. Most of the tasks that would, in previous versions of Windows, have opened the My Documents folder now open the Libraries view instead.

A library is a way to show the contents of many folders in one place, and could be handy now that most computers come with hundreds of gigabytes of storage space.

Four are set up by default: Documents; Music; Pictures; and Videos. For example, the Documents Library shows all the files in the user’s My Documents folder and the Public Documents folder in one window. If you were to also keep a folder on an external hard disk this can be easily added so that its contents will also appear in the library.

Creating a new library takes just a few clicks, so you could quickly set up a library for personal documents and another one for work files.

Although the Libraries system seems odd at first, it’s simple and useful. Any users who dislike the system will find all the same user folders as in Vista’s Documents, Music, etc so the library system can be effectively bypassed if it is not needed.

Not everyone keeps files neatly organised by folder, of course. Fortunately, as in Windows Vista, it’s also possible to store searches and use these as, effectively, a virtual folder containing one type of file.

If you search for a term (‘jpg’, perhaps) via the Start menu, then click See more results, a search window will appear from which you can simply choose Save search. Saved searches can be left in the Explorer Favourites list, or a shortcut can be placed on the desktop.