Windows 7 makes Vista look like a beta (MS Windows 7 Home Premium)

Member Name: agewills

Product:	MS Windows 7 Home Premium
Date:	04/11/09 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Smooth, quick, good looking, easy to use

Disadvantages: We were robbed by MS - Vista should have been like this!

Windows 7 makes Windows Vista feel like a beta. That's my philosophy. It was my philosophy before I bought Windows 7 and it's still my philosophy now. That's where the "it looks like Vista" comments come from. Windows 7 is Vista without all the rubbish. Everything people moaned about in vista is gone (or improved) and 7 is more spangly and all singing and dancing. It looks better, runs more smoothly and is simple to use. You might even say its been dumbed down for the masses. Simplified. It's a pleasure to use. It loads more quickly than Vista and is aesthetically pleasing as it does so.

The first thing to note is the ease with which it installed. For those of us brave enough to install our own operating systems (and re-install every so often to keep it fresh), we all know the pain and misery that it can lead too, but I have to say, the Windows 7 install was very smooth and easy. Windows Vista was pretty good, faster than XP and less hassle, Windows 7 goes that step further, its nearly a breeze. Much to my delight, Windows 7 even recognised and installed my internet/modem before I had even fully loaded windows! Which was amazing enough as I normally have to battle with the PC to get it working. From format to fresh install probably took half an hour, maximum. Then there's the fun of installing everything else that you usually use in windows, but because its new, at least you don't have a 15 service packs and a billion mb's of updates to download and install. Just a handful. One of the gripes people have/had with Vista is the lack of driver support. Most things didn't work straight off and required hacked drivers or just wouldn't work at all! That's not the case with Windows 7. Everything works smoothly. The drivers for mice, keyboards and other peripherals installed with stupidly insane ease and it even recognised what they were in the control panel. I had to do a little hunting for my sound card drivers, but that was relatively easy.

Other changes are pleasant as well. They've re-jigged the loading screen once again and there are now even "themes" in windows that you can change (and download more from the internet). Simple little things. Like selecting one that changes the colours of the task bar, your default system sounds and puts a slideshow style wallpaper on your desktop. Sure you can do most of that in any windows, but it would take a little poking about with the settings, this can be done with one (or two) click(s) of the mouse. Just right click on the desktop, click "personalise" and then choose a theme! Its not all about looks though, there are quite a few new additions to improve your PC experience. The task bar has a new look and windows are popped together in bunches, hover your mouse cursor over it and see what windows are open. Windows media player is updated to a point where it automatically recognised where my music was stored (on another harddrive, not on C in "My music" folder as you might expect) without me even telling it anything.

You might well have seen some of the new features on the adverts. The best is probably dragging open windows to the edge of the screen, they will then "snap" into place and allow you to have two screens side by side without the faffing around of changing the size and trying to align it all yourself. But there are many other simple features which are a pleasure to use. Very simple things like a quick right click on the desktop brings up an options menu - they have now added "change resolution" as an option in that list. So that's nice an easy. A button on the far right of the taskbar will "show desktop" with one click, another button there allows you to bring up the task manager without hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL.

The UAC controls are still in place, but not as potent or irritating, but that could be because I am used to them? The whole windows theme seems to have a "larger" element to it. The icons, buttons and everything are just bigger, even with a really high resolution. You can however change this in the control panel, if you like things to be small, like I do. The gadget sidebar has been dropped and you can now just drop gadgets where ever you feel like. The slideshow wallpaper has to be one of my favourite features though, you can customise it with your own images to give W7 your own personal touch. Its nice. Yet not system heavy. Windows 7 just feels better in all honesty. Quicker, smoother, Sleeker. I have the 64 bit version of Home Premium installed and that's all you need on a modern PC. The box comes with the 32bit version for old pcs too though. There is no real need for ultimate. Windows Vista Ultimate had a lot more to offer, but you only seem to need Windows 7 Ultimate if you are a corporation or connect directly to a domain. Just google to see the differences. The average home user, even gamer, only needs Home Premium. Its worth the money too, from what I've seen so far. Im sure there's a lot I haven't found yet. Just wish my work place ran it too, would make life a lot easier with the snappy features.

Summary: Its a good new O/S, well worth the money and investment

Variety of features:
Reliability:
User friendly:
Installation:
Update possibilites: