A look at what’s new in Windows 7

The BBC’s Jason Palmer gets his hands on Windows 7

The newest release of Microsoft’s flagship product Windows is to be released on Thursday.

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There are a great many changes to the operating system, which has already been described by one analyst as “a polishing release of Windows Vista”.

Here, BBC News takes a quick run through the most noticeable changes.

Fresh start

From the very start, then: installation. Windows 7 is designed to be a markedly less bulky and resource-intensive OS, so the installation should be comparatively quick, and there’s a particularly lightweight version for netbooks.

The difficulties that plagued upgrades from XP to Vista are gone, because the architecture of Windows 7 rests on the changes made in Vista. Equally, however, that will make upgrading from XP difficult.

If you are aiming to upgrade directly from Windows XP to Windows 7, be aware that Microsoft doesn’t recommend it. Not only is it likely to take significantly longer, the directory structure is different between the two and many applications may not work if not run after a “fresh” installation.

The release offers many new personalisation options like desktops

If installing Windows 7 on an older machine, it’s probably best to check with the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor program to see whether your machine is compatible or if you are likely to see the improvements in speed that the OS can in principle offer.

For the most part, software that runs on Vista will run on Windows 7; many big-name software vendors of programs that don’t upgrade easily have free upgrades available on the web.

Microsoft promises that its Windows Easy Transfer will smooth the process of moving your files from an older machine to your new Windows 7 computer.

However, be aware that many simple programs for handling things like instant messaging are missing from Windows 7 on install; instead, the idea is that users will begin to use the cloud-based services that form Windows Live.

First look

With Windows 7 installed, the first thing to note is that it doesn’t look – or, on startup, sound – all that different from Vista.

One quickly noticeable difference is that the desktop widgets, or Gadgets, can now be placed wherever you like on the desktop.

The taskbar along the bottom of the screen has had a few new features added to it: hover over the Internet Explorer bar, for example, and up pop small previews of all the open Explorer windows, even if they’re running live video at the time.

Thumbnail previews of open windows

Hover over the previews, and just that window will pop up in full size, with all other windows minimised.

The taskbar also harks back to earlier Windows releases with the return of the “quick launch” menu: put your favourite programs there and they can be run straight from the taskbar.

Continuing in the theme of simplifying your workspace, the stylistic “Aero” features first shown off in Vista have been explored, leading to new features.

Too many windows open? Grab the bar at the top of a window, give it a shake with the mouse, and all other windows minimise. Repeat the process to re-maximise the other windows.

Aero Peek isn’t really a feature per se – a little patch of the right of the taskbar performs the function of the prior “show desktop” icon – but it simply makes the windows transparent, leaving behind their outlines.

Networking opportunity

Microsoft has added a few new bells and whistles for home networking, as well. Each computer that is running Windows 7 on a network can dictate what kinds of files will be shared – documents, videos, or music – and which will remain private.

The release allows detailed control of files shared on a home network

Also, there is new functionality in the “Play To” menu for media: users can play a multimedia out to other computers in the network or even an XBox.

Microsoft has also refined the search function that was wholly revamped for Vista. As before, it searches across all hard drives, and keeps a running tally so that results are displayed more or less instantly, as you type – reminiscent of Apple Mac’s search.

In Windows 7, the search results are broken down into sub-lists by type, such as documents, multimedia, programs, and so on.

Users can also create “libraries” of certain types of files – not unlike Mac OS’s “smart folders”: a sort of virtual directory that contains for instance all of your image files, regardless of the folders where they actually reside.

Lastly, Windows incorporates some familiar tricks having to do with “multitouch” functions, either on a mousepad or a touchscreen device, should you have one.

However, these multitouch features work with all applications.

Holding one finger down on an icon while tapping with another functions like a right-click and two fingers can be used to zoom in and out of images or webpages, or rotate them.

Windows 7 desktop virtualisation opens new possibilities

Microsoft Windows 7 brings new levels of virtualisation to the desktop. This includes natively booting from virtual hard disks and XP Mode. Both open exciting new possibilities for enterprise deployments and software distribution.

Microsoft has previously offered virtualisation products in the past in the form of Virtual PC and Virtual Server, albeit with limitations. Only editions of Windows Server 2008 ship with built-in virtualisation support.

With Windows 7 Microsoft is bringing virtualisation to more and more folk, built in to the desktop operating system for the first time.

One facet of this is Windows XP Mode (or XPM) which runs a genuine instance of Windows XP within Windows 7. This feature has no doubt been occasioned by the bad acclaim Windows Vista received causing much head scratching in Redmond about how to encourage users to move on from the safety blanket that Windows XP has become.

By making XPM an inclusion in Windows 7 Microsoft can effectively give users encouragement that their Windows XP apps and games will still work fine. Even if they don’t run natively, they’ll run within XPM.

However, XPM is only available in the professional and higher Windows 7 editions. Further, it requires a processor that has native virtualisation support implemented in its silicon. For many home users neither of these pre-requisites will be the case.

For enterprises it’s a different matter, with basic and home editions of Windows 7 being unsuitable anyway due to their restrictions in the way of participating in corporate domains.

Consequently, XPM may offer business users a means to ensure legacy desktop applications continue to be available while simultaneously deploying modern infrastructure.

XPM might also present creative solutions to other problems allowing, for instance, two different versions of Microsoft Office products to be installed and working at the same time.

Virtualisation is clearly an important part of Windows 7. Microsoft have already spoken at length about how Windows 7 will let you create virtual hard drives (.vhd files) through the operating system, and then boot from these. This will make running multiple operating systems much simpler. There won’t be any need to worry about disk partitioning; just create virtual hard drives and boot from these, loading on whatever OS you want. With this latest news, you don’t even need to do that to run Windows XP programs.

Windows 7 is shaping up to be an impressive release with a remarkable and even innovative feature set. I’m sure Microsoft will be pulling out all the guns to make certain Windows 7 turns the tide of perception back around. Now they can definitely lure the Windows XP stayers with a promise of complete compatibility.