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Commentary: A first look at Windows 7

By: dmc-admin//September 14, 2009//

Commentary: A first look at Windows 7

By: dmc-admin//September 14, 2009//

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The countdown to the public release of Windows 7 has started — the official release is scheduled for October 22. I have been working with betas and release candidates of Windows 7 for the past several months, and it looks like a win for everyone. Microsoft Vista has certainly taken some black eyes in the past, but Windows 7 is a welcome upgrade.

Upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 was painless and flawless. Before attempting the upgrade, I imaged my system so I could quickly restore it to a known good state if things went badly. As it turns out, the upgrade was easy and I encountered no problems.

Upgrading from Windows XP or another operating system, however, may be a different story. Microsoft recommends in such cases that “you experience Windows 7 on a new PC.” If you are running XP, you might want to stay there until you replace that computer.

With four editions of Windows 7 available, you’ll need to choose which version is right for you. Windows 7 Starter Edition and Home Premium Edition are targeted at netbooks and home network PCs, respectively. Windows 7 Professional is targeted as a general office PC operating system, but lacks some of the security tools like BitLocker. Windows 7 Ultimate is the most feature-rich — and expensive — of the Windows 7 editions.

For the legal office, stick with Professional or Ultimate.

The Windows 7 user interface is very appealing — it’s a subtle improvement over the experience in Vista. Microsoft has definitely focused on optimizing the user interface from startup to shutdown. It is responsive and snappy and has subtle animations to improve usability. Aero Peek, for example, lets you hover your mouse over the program icons in the task bar to see thumbnails of open windows in that application. Just click on a thumbnail to bring that window to the foreground.

The task bar itself is easier to work with — you can move the icons around on the taskbar as you like. One of my favorite additions is “jump lists.” Jump lists appear with start menu program icons to let you choose a recently used file for that application.

Other user interface features are especially nice when you have multiple monitors. “Snap” lets you drag and maximize a window in a single gesture, and shaking a window by its title bar minimizes all other running applications.

There are also more substantive features that make Windows 7 appealing. “Libraries,” for example, let you create logical collections of folders to organize related content. You could collect all of your folders containing templates for Wisconsin litigation into a single library to make them easier to search and find, even though those templates might exist in many folders.

Windows 7 builds document searches right into the operating system to make searching your libraries fast and easy. Just enter a search term into the Explorer search prompt, and Windows returns matching files with a short excerpt containing the search term. One click opens a document returned in the search results.

If security is on your mind, check out BitLocker To Go. BitLocker is a volume encryption utility that was introduced with Windows Vista, but it has been improved in Windows 7 with the addition of BitLocker To Go (BTG). BTG is essentially the same idea as BitLocker — encrypting the contents of a drive to prevent unauthorized access — but BTG lets you encrypt removable drives like flash drives or portable USB drives. If you’ve ever broken into a cold sweat when you can’t find that USB flash drive with all that client information on it, you’ll understand why this can help you sleep better at night.

If you rely on older applications that currently run on Windows XP, you may want to investigate Windows 7 XP Mode, a virtual environment that runs under Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate. Microsoft has provided XP Mode as a means of running applications that are not Windows 7 compatible. If your law office software is a bit long in the tooth, XP Mode can smooth your transition.

Overall, Windows 7 look like a respectable improvement over the Windows Vista platform. It is faster, has nice new features, an appealing user interface and a foundation that is substantially more secure than its predecessor XP operating system.

Ron Phillips is a self-described attorney-computer nerd with over fifteen years of experience as a software architect and technology entrepreneur. He has helped to design and build enterprise systems for large and mid-size corporations, developed commercial software products and authored several books and articles concerning software development, applications and technology. He enjoys helping fellow attorneys with their technology questions one-on-one and on the Practice 411 forum, and looks forward to sharing his technology perspectives in this column. You can reach Ron at [email protected]

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