Windows 7 Launch Thoughts
Windows 7 was finally released commercially on Thursday. Even though I have used the beta, release candidate and final versions of the OS, it ceases to amaze me what I keep learning about it. For example, I love the new taskbar both because of looks and functionality. It didn’t occur to me until the onslaught of Windows 7 articles the last three days that I like it probably because it resembles the Mac OS X Dock. It should have been more obvious to me, the looks are what threw me off, but it is essentially Microsoft’s version of what Apple has had for years. It’s not a bad move, and they actually improve upon it, but it’s still amazing that something I have been using for four years previous to this was hidden so well from my eyes.
I also didn’t realize how well the Home Group networking feature worked, probably because all of my experience with the technology was with hooking up to old XP machines. Once I get more machines upgraded it will hopefully make media sharing dead simple.
The student upgrade of Home Premium for only $29.99, available from either win741.com or The Ultimate Steal (both are Microsoft sites), is an amazing deal. I personally paid $49.99 on the special preorder promotion back in July for the same Home Premium upgrade, but another $20 off would have been nice. Then again, it’s still better than the MSRP of $119.99.
As for my my experience with Windows 7, I love it. I hated Vista for changing everything I knew and loved in XP without any gains, but now Windows 7 fixes that with a performance boost and some extra bonuses which make it seem like a real upgrade. It’s stable, it’s pretty, and it has enough modern features to separate it from the pack.
