We were among the first journalists to get their hands on the Windows 7 Beta code and have been testing it. Here, we've ranked the 30 best features we've found in Windows 7 so far, ranging from minor tweaks of the user interface to a full replacement for virtual private networks.
Windows 7 should now be feature-locked, though some changes will appear in the release candidate in late 2009, so this is your best guide to the new Operating System.
The top 30 best features of Windows 7:
1. Don't need a new PC
Windows 7 will become the first major Windows release that any of us can remember that doesn't require better hardware than its predecessor. In fact, it might even run on systems that struggle with Vista, especially netbooks.
Our real-world benchmarks show that the performance difference between Vista and Windows 7 is zilch. Our Office benchmarks and video-encoding tests completed in precisely the same time, regardless of which OS was installed on our test machine. However, there's no doubt that Windows 7 feels faster. Applications open in a snap, and there are fewer instances of the whirly waiting wheel that afflicts Vista.
Better still, it runs happily on netbooks. Although we've seen a few netbooks such as the HP Mini-Note 2133 pre-installed with Vista Basic, most resort to Windows XP. However, we installed Windows 7 on an MSI Wind, with an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, and it performed spotlessly.
The Aero interface is smooth, menus responsive, even Media Center works with commendable polish. What's more, it goes from power off to booted and ready to use in around 50 seconds - only ten seconds slower than Windows 7 boots on a Dell M1330 laptop, with a Core 2 Duo T9500 running at 2.6GHz and 3GB of RAM.
2. Big-screen support
Large, high-definition displays are much better catered for in Windows 7. First, there's no more fiddling around in the Control Panel to make your desktop appear on an external display - pressing Windows + P brings up a pop-up menu with options to duplicate, extend or transfer your desktop on to the second screen.
There's also good news for those who've been squinting at the mammoth LCD panels connected to their PCs. The telemetry from Microsoft's Customer Experience Programme revealed that only half of Windows users are running their PCs at native resolution, with others artificially reducing the resolution as they're struggling to read the text.
Consequently, there's a new option to boost the text and other onscreen items to 150% of their normal size. We tested this feature on a 30in widescreen display and it instantly made the text more readable, although you obviously have to sacrifice some screen real estate - which is the main reason for choosing a bigger screen in the first place.
The art is finding a reasonable compromise. If you simply want to zoom in on a small portion of the screen, the Mac-like magnifier allows you to smoothly zoom in and scroll around the screen.
3. Start button search
The Start button search facility introduced with Windows Vista has been given a spruce up that makes it a genuine timesaver. Instead of merely hunting for exact filename and application matches, the search is more intelligent.
Search for "disk" for example, and not only do applications such as Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter appear as they would in Vista, but also Control Panel tasks such as "Create and format hard disk partitions" and "Create a password reset disk".
It isn't a straight keyword search, either - "Use tools to improve performance" comes up when you search for "processor", for instance. It's a clever way of making hard-to-find Control Panel features more accessible.
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4. BitLocker To Go
With USB sticks responsible for many recent security scares, Microsoft has decided to tackle the issue head-on with Windows 7. BitLocker To Go effortlessly encrypts any external USB drive by right-clicking on the drive's icon and entering a suitably secure password. You're given the option to save and print out a recovery key, which can be used to access data on the drive should you forget the password.
The USB drive can also be automatically unlocked on your mainPC, to save entering the password every time, although this obviously makes it less secure. Microsoft promises that BitLocker To Go will offer read-only support on older versions of Windows - for now, encrypted disks appear as full, inaccessible drives on Windows XP and Vista.
IT departments running the forthcoming Windows Server 2008 R2 can set a group policy that forces employees to encrypt the drive before they can copy company data to the disk, which should help prevent data leaks and the need for more drastic security measures, such as locking down USB ports.
Microsoft has boosted BitLocker support for internal drives, too, with PC hard disks also encryptable at the right-click of a mouse (Windows 7 will automatically create the hidden boot partition). Whether BitLocker will be restricted to Enterprise and Ultimate versions of the OS, as it was with Vista, remains to be seen.
5. Document libraries
Microsoft has taken a whole world of pain out of locating and searching for documents in Windows 7. The new Libraries function in Windows Explorer allows you to add network folders, SharePoint documents, and pretty much any folder you choose to your Documents Library, meaning even files that are tucked away within the nether regions of a server can be accessed within only a couple of clicks.
Better still, if the drive containing your documents fills up, you can simply change the default save location and add that new location into the Documents view. No time-consuming file copies required.
There's also a new concept of Search Connectors. Add an email search connector into the Documents view and, when you type a search term in the box at the top-right, it will search your email, too.
6. Nag-free System Tray
Your antivirus software is out of date! Wireless networks detected! The woman at number 43 has just turned on her oven! Vista's System Tray spewed out so many pop-up warnings that you couldn't see the wood for the trees. Windows 7's revamped System Tray, on the other hand, has been blissfully gagged.
Windows warning messages are now concealed in the "Windows Solutions Center" - a small lighthouse icon that sits silently in the System Tray and delivers warning messages only when you click on it. In fact, it could even be argued that Microsoft has gone a little too far.
Hidden warnings that the security software is switched off, for example, won't bother most PC Authority readers, but the average consumer would probably appreciate the heads-up.
The modern-day habit of every application barging its way into the System Tray has also been curtailed. The System Tray now consists of only three key Windows icons, with the rest banished to a new overflow area. Users have complete control over which icons appear in the System Tray, so if there's a particular app you need to keep an eye on, you can promote it.
7. Drag and snap windows
Today's large widescreen displays are perfect for comparing documents side by side, but resizing two Windows to fit on the same screen in XP or Vista is a faff. Windows 7 makes it a cinch: drag one window to the far left, the other to the right, and the two fit snugly together like old ladies on the bus.
Windows can be dragged into action in other ways, too. Pull a window to the top of the screen and it's automatically maximised. Pull it back down from the top, and the window returns to its original size. Such gesture-like controls quickly become second nature, practically sending the "maximise" and "restore" controls to the dole queue.
8. Location-aware printing
Anyone used to ferrying a laptop between work and home will be familiar with the tedium of thoughtlessly pressing <Ctrl+P> in the office, only to find Word struggling to find the home inkjet that's set as default. In Windows 7, the PC automatically detects when you're at home and at work when you connect to the network, and automatically selects the relevant printer. It's the little things...
9. UAC silencer
Windows chief Steven Sinofsky has admitted that Vista's User Account Control had proved as popular as the village serial killer. The show-stopping interruptions are now completely under user control, with a sliding scale of UAC setting that ranges from turning the security "feature" off completely, to notifications every time a piece of software raises an eyebrow at your settings.
10. Media streamer playback
Windows Media Player now includes the option to play back music on other networked devices in the home, not only the PC you're sat in front of. So, for example, you could be sitting in the lounge with a laptop and select a music track to play back through a media-streaming device with its own dedicated speakers, instead of your tinny laptop affairs.
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11. Revamped Taskbar and jumplists
Replacing the Taskbar window tabs with large, chunky icons isn't big, clever, nor particularly innovative - Apple's Mac OS X Dock and the KDE interface have been doing this for donkey's years.
Sometimes, however, ‘borrowing' ideas from others is better than attempting to reinvent the wheel, and our hands-on tests with the new Windows 7 interface at the Professional Developers Conference (the user interface isn't incorporated into the Windows 7 build Microsoft has released for testing) showed that Microsoft was right to flatter its rivals with a little imitation.
Not only are the bigger icons more finger-friendly for those running Windows 7 on a touchscreen PC, they also conceal the new "jumplists".
Accessible through a right-click (or an upwards swipe of the finger) on the Taskbar icon, the jumplists spring out to reveal a bevy of handy shortcuts that are tailored to that particular application. These might be recently opened documents in Word, music player controls in Windows Media Player, or a link to open the privacy mode in Internet Explorer, for example.
Jumplists are also available from programs listed in the Start menu, with a pop-up box appearing to the right. And, at long last, Microsoft has finally made it possible to drag and drop the Taskbar icons into the order you wish, without having to download the TweakUI PowerToy.
12. HomeGroup
With the average household now containing multiple PCs according to Microsoft, home networking is heading towards the mainstream. HomeGroup should help make it easier. After setting up your HomeGroup on your first Windows 7 PC, any new Windows 7 machine that's connected to the home network will be automatically detected and enrolled into the HomeGroup.
This means a new Windows 7 laptop can instantly share the printer connected to the desktop PC in the study, for example. It also allows any PC on the HomeGroup to share documents, photos, music, video and other files across the network. Files on other Windows 7 PCs can be searched for as if they were stored locally, using the new Libraries function in Windows Explorer.
Certain types of documents and folders can be excluded from the HomeGroup if you wish to keep those private, and companies can lock down the HomeGroup functions to prevent business data being shared when an employee fires up their laptop at home.
The obvious downside is that all the other PCs on the network will need to be left on if you wish to search their files, which still makes a NAS/Windows Home Server device a more sensible option for sharing data in the home.
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