Ever hear the saying “death by a thousand tiny cuts”? The inverse might be “Love by a thousand tiny kisses”…. and that’s the best way I can describe Windows 7. There isn’t one thing that’s absolutely remarkable (except maybe the hibernate reliability), but there’s so many little things that make you smile a couple of times a day. It all adds up to a wonderful user experience.
One of my favorites is the new taskbar. This thing is amazing… so easy to use. It’s simple enough for my mom to use without fear, but it’s sophisticated enough to meet my needs
Look at those big buttons and the concept of a button and running program is now beautifully merged. If it’s running, it’s big and has text. If it’s not running, it’s small(er) and doesn’t. If you want another instance of something right, right-click and you see a standard convention:
Note, the panels. You get “Most visited”, “Tasks” and the standard “Google Chrome”, “Unpin this program from the taskbar” and “Close window”. In other words, “open new”, “(un)pin” and “close”. This is the standard options for all programs. The “Most visited” and “Tasks” is specific to Chrome. However, there’s obviously something in Windows 7 that provides this capability, because each program has their own little nuggets of this flavor. For example, Remote Desktop has the very handy “Recent” panel:
That alone saves me 100 clicks a day easily. Check out iTunes – if it’s playing something and you’re hovering the program, check out this little gem:
The standard right-click gives me to the option of going straight to the store – very slick!
This stuff makes Windows a joy to use – for me the power user as well as normal folks. Version 7 is by far Microsoft’s best OS. Very, very well done.