This is the second part of my personal review of Windows 7 release candidate. Here, I share my first hands on experience with this upcoming OS from Microsoft. This week I learned that Windows 7 is confirmed to be available before the holiday season. Yep, Redmond guys already confirmed this official launch to be final unless something happens along the way that will postpone it. Don’t worry, this is only a typical Microsoft OS launching you should get used to. Let’s hope not. Heehee.

So, we left off from my experience installing Windows 7 RC on my laptop which work smoothly without a single glitch. Now let me share to you the noticing improvements on Windows 7 RC compared to Windows Vista on my own personal review.

Windows 7’s Newest Task bar

I love the new task bar Microsoft created onto this new OS. Not only does it do transparency, the nifty thing about this new task bar is the omission of the the text of the running application. Instead, an icon of the running application is displayed which was pretty neat. If you happen to open multiple windows of an application like Windows Explorer, those open windows will stack onto that single icon. Hovering your mouse over will open up mini preview windows that you can select which windows to focus or close. Picture below:

Nice isn’t it. Also, default applications are already pinned to the task bar when you first install this OS. This is very convenient especially if you want to access your most used application right at your task bar. You can re-arrange them in any order or un-pin them if you want. An opaque background on the icon indicates that pinned program is currently running. Another feature of this new task bar is what they called a jump list. Picture below:

Jump lists are shortcuts to recently accessed files or website depending on a particular application. For example, Internet Explorer 8. If you run IE8 and right click the icon, you will see a menu of recently visited sites. Same for Windows 7’s default applications like Windows Media Player and Paint which previews recently worked on files. Microsoft Office supports this. However, Firefox browser doesn’t support this yet so better wait for the upcoming update if they will integrate this function into their browser.

Aside from the task bar icons, Windows 7 improved the notification icons in the notification area. The date now appears below the clock. There is a new icon for the connections. Instead of a two monitor icon with a mini globe indication of a web access, the connection icon displays whether your connected via LAN cable or wireless connection. Microsoft limits the intrusiveness of notifications whether a new update or system notifications in is effect. A flag represented from the new Action Center which users can inquire of certain issues regarding automatic updates and system maintenance. Maintenance includes backup and other problems the system encountered. There are options for you to check solutions to the problems by connecting to the Microsoft website. Informs you if an update is necessary and suggests actions you would like to take. Included in the Actions Center is the Security section. Informs you if certain security protocols are turned on like firewall and windows updates. Notifies you if your anti-virus is updated and running.

Program compatibilities

General rule: If applications run smoothly in Windows Vista, then those will work just fine in Windows 7. I installed applications I normally use and all of them performed well.
There are applications on my laptop that are working fine in Windows 7. They are:

Firefox

Yahoo Messenger

Avast Anti-Virus

Microsoft Office 2007

FLV Player

Adobe CS3

VLC Player

Quicktime + iTunes

Limewire

Picasa 3

Winamp

Win RAR Archiver

Tuneup Utilities 2009

uTorrent

When it comes to games, I only tried Left4Dead. The game run much faster than on Windows Vista. Noticeable improvements are increased frame rate and reduced choppiness. On Windows Vista, I can hardly play this and the graphics usually is not good. Note: This observations were based from the laptop I’m currently using in testing Windows 7. The hardware specifications of the specific laptop is the basis for the performance of the game. For my laptop specs, read my first part review of Windows 7.

As of this writing, nothing went haywire running these applications on Windows 7. I think this OS is ready to hit the store shelves this coming holiday season.

Some galleries of Windows 7 that I screen capture using Snipping Tool: