On July 22nd, 2009, the world witnessed the unveiling of Windows 7 by the Microsoft Corporation. Many may have wondered then (and with every right to do so) how it would fare. For starters Windows 7 has a lot to live up to and luckily for Microsoft, Windows 7 seems to be more than ‘just another windows’. The humble origins of this operating system go way back, it was initially codenamed ‘Blackcomb’ and was planned as the successor to Windows XP .A lot of exciting features were planned for Blackcomb including a futuristic storage system called WinFS. Then in 2006, this project was renamed ‘Vienna’ and again to Windows 7 in 2007 which was announced as the official name in the following year.

Unlike the windows vista, which just introduced a host of new features, Windows 7 is intended to be a more focused and performance centered software. Bill gates himself quoted in an interview that the next windows would “be more user-centric”. We can be sure however that Windows 7 will be more than just “user-centric”. Microsoft’s goals are clear, improving performance and full compatibility with all kinds of applications seem to be their main lookout, not to mention multi-touch support for touch screen users.

Windows 7 too comes with a dazzling array of new and exciting features. The first thing that anyone will notice is the new taskbar which is definitely one of the best upgrades that Microsoft has made till date. The new taskbar is arguably even better than the Mac OS X dock which can be attributed to its simplicity and sheer ease of use especially for those who use touch screens. Another new feature of the taskbar are jump lists, which is essentially a listing of recently opened documents (making it easier to access).this can be activated by simply left or right clicking anywhere on the taskbar and dragging. Windows media player too seems to have got a lot of attention from Microsoft this time around so you can now stream media files from one Windows 7 computer to another any way you want-be it over the internet or through a network. Even better, the setup process is dead simple. People who have used Vista may be familiar with the aero theme (introduced in Vista) which is used again in windows 7 with some changes of course, the Aero theme seems highly polished and refined but it should still keep fans of the original Aero happy enough.

Windows 7 also features an XP mode which creates a virtual environment of Windows XP inside Windows 7 itself, Therefore companies or anyone (for that matter) who needs to access programs designed for Windows XP within Windows 7 can do so without worrying about backward compatibility. As far as security is concerned, Windows 7 brings back the User account control (UAC) which was first introduced in Windows vista. But unlike in Windows vista, the User account control in Windows 7 is less troublesome. The UAC basically enabled users to control program access but in Vista many people were quite irritated with this new feature. Another first in windows security which will be seen on Windows 7 is that windows will no longer auto-run your standard USB devices such as external hard drives, pen drives and the like in order to prevent any malware infections. The bottom line is that Windows 7 has done more than what Windows vista should have done. It seems to have become that revolutionary software that has been much awaited for since Windows XP. Windows 7 also fixes those loops and holes which were present in Windows vista and by doing so it has laid a kind of foundation for the future of windows. Although Windows 7 provides a stable and feature rich platform, the big question of whether Windows 7 is enough for people to abandon Windows XP is something that only time can tell.

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