Yep, start saying goodbye to Vista…. Windows 7 is moving in. The quick logo mock up I made had images from dtgeeks.com, windows7news.com, and lh5.ggpht.com/stojanoskislave. It does have a Vista logo, but it doesn’t really matter since Windows 7 is quite like Vista. In short, it is Vista, supposedly with its bad parts fixed or removed plus some other cool features. The name “Windows 7″ is to show its focus on simplicity and since it is the 7th version of Windows (Vista being the 6th version)

The little taskbar that I have there is what the Windows 7′s taskbar looks like as of Build 6933. It has icons of the programs and pops up previews of the windows when you hover over it, even the tabs (such as of IE, and the various docs on Word). Right clicking on one of these icons results in a Jump List. These give you access to data such as the most recent document, website, and to common tasks like media controls. The system tray has also been optimized to smoothen the experience. The default tray will have four icons, Volume, Power, Network, and Action center. Applications that install system tray icons are hidden by defualt. To the far right, there is a little rectangular box which allows you to access “Peak”. Hovering ofter this will make all windows transparent giving you a clear view of the desk top, a click brings you to the desktop. Learn more about the taskbar on this website.

Windows 7′s New Taskbar (from http://windows7news.com/)

The Start Menu (from arstechnica.com)

“Peeking” (from arstechnica.com)

A few of the typical programs you find on a Windows system have also been updated. The calculator now has in addition to Standard and Scientific mode, Programmer and Statistics mode which are handy for those functions. Paint and Wordpad have also been revamped with the Ribbon taskbar borrowed from Office 2007.

The New Paint (from http://windows7news.com/)

Wikipedia also states that there are “advancements in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.” The Control Panel has also been updated with additional icons, “including: Accelerators, ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Infrared, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, Windows Solution Center, and Display.”

There are also features called “Aero Snap” and “Aero Shake”. Snap allows you to move your cursor to various points on the screen and the window will snap into a specific shape (full screen, half screen). Shake allows you to “shake” a window which causes all the windows other than that one to minimize and if done again, maximizes them again. See these in the videos below.

A demonstration of “Aero Snap”

A demonstration of Aero Shake

Microsoft has also added a new feature to the Windows Explorer called Libraries which basically is a folder, but rather than the files in the folder are actually in that folder, they are from various locations all put in one area. In other words, it is a way to organize your files independent of the location of the files.

Libraries in Windows 7 (from arstechnica.com)