Add another name to the roster of feature-rich freeware image editors: PhotoScape. Although it eats and leaks about as much memory as Firefox, this editor is perfect for those making the jump between JPEG and am-pro dSLR work.
It supports RAW, as well as all other major image formats from JPEG and PNG to animated GIFs. It comes with prebuilt templates for users to create photo collages, fumetti, and Web comics, and has a standard set of red-eye removal, light/shadow, and contrast-editing features. One warning about the RAW processing: although it looks like you can drag and drop, the converter doesn't change RAW to JPEG unless you load the RAW file from within the native file navigator. It's a minor bug, but one that can lead you to believe that there's no RAW support at all. You can also batch edit images, combine them, and print them out one at a time or several at once.
The program loads fast and possesses an interface completely different from those familiar with Adobe's industry-leading tools. Users are greeted by circular navigator complemented by a tabbed nav on the top of the main screen. Most but not all main features are accessible from either nav. It might take some people time to get used to the unusual layout, but it's only unusual for an image editor; otherwise it's intuitive, fast, and lacks only the most advanced of image editing features.
Publisher's Description PhotoScape is an all-in-one style photo editor with fun and ease of use. Major capabilities are: viewer, editor, batch editor, page, combine, animated GIF, print, splitter, screen capture, color picker, rename, raw converter, resizing, brightness/color/white-balance adjustment, backlight correction, frames, balloons, text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal and blooming. PhotoScape has been used for two years and is expanding its features continuously.
What's new in this version: Version 3.6 improves 'Full Screen' and 'Slide Show' features. 'Screen Capture' feature improved and bugs fixed. Windows Vista/7 Library Folder supported. Photos can now be rotated using the Batch Editor Tab.
Bottom line: Version 10.5.1 of iTunes brings a handful of enhancements to Apple's ubiquitous media software, including iTunes Match, the cloud-based music-matching service that makes your music available on all your authorized devices.
Review: As one of the most popular programs for managing music and video content on a personal computer, Apple's iTunes software has become an indispensable part of our digital life.
Interface The look and layout of iTunes 10 is essentially identical to that of iTunes 9, with just a couple of noticeable differences. The first is that Apple has updated its logo for iTunes. Rather than the old-school music note-over-CD icon, you'll see a much more applike image. Still, the company hasn't figured out how to more broadly represent the jukebox's multimedia functionality: there's still just a music note.
There's also been a slight change to the source menu that runs as a column down the left side. The bright blue icons representing the various submenus have been changed to gray--an odd change in our eyes as it makes them stand out even less, which doesn't make a ton of sense for menu options. That said, they still offer quick access to your media library, the iTunes Store, Genius features, and playlists. Once a selection is chosen in the source menu, all the relevant content spills out into the large main window, where it can be organized and sorted using an arsenal of sophisticated, spreadsheet-like options or switched into a Cover Flow view that hearkens back to the days of flipping through record crates.
Once you're in the iTunes Store, navigation links now run horizontally across the top of the window and include drop-down menus to quickly drill down into specific sections, such as Jazz. Front page content is attractively arranged and allows you to launch music and video previews directly, without jumping in and out of specific album and video listings. There's also an option menu next to every purchase button, allowing you to copy the item's URL, add to your Wish List, gift the purchase, or share the link on Facebook or Twitter. We're happy to see that Apple kept all these great enhancements from version 9.
Features What started out as a basic jukebox program for ripping and burning CDs and transferring music to your iPod has evolved over the years into a multimedia behemoth capable of handling everything from HD-movie rentals to syncing appointments with your iPhone. In spite of all the bells and whistles that have been tacked on to iTunes over the years, at its core, iTunes still remains an excellent tool for managing your music and video collections.
One of the the major feature additions in version 10 is Ping, a social music tool akin to Microsoft's Zune Social. Ping lets you select your favorite artists to follow, and then provides updated information on new music and concerts in your area (as well as a Twitter-like feed of comments from the artists). In addition, you can connect with your friends through iTunes by sending e-mail invites or by linking to your Facebook account. Ping is also built into the iTunes app, allowing users to access it on-the-go. Ping started off slow at release with only a few artists to follow, but after a few iTunes updates, Ping blossomed into full-fledged service. Ping still struggles to catch on, however, and is probably not as widely used as Apple might have hoped.
Another new feature in iTunes 10 is the ability to rent TV shows a la carte--for 99 cents apiece. Call us cheap, but this seems hideously expensive, especially considering the fact that iTunes has often offered specials in the past when you could purchase shows for 99 cents rather than $1.99. Further, we'd be surprised if there's much interest in renting a 30-minute program (which are really more like 22 minutes in most cases) at that price. Even the studios aren't thrilled with the idea: only Fox and ABC have signed on for the initial launch.
On the plus side, the latest version of the jukebox does carry over all the great features from its predecessor. There's the iTunes LP media format, Home Sharing, Genius Mixes, and plentiful device-syncing options. As a throwback to a bygone era when people purchased and revered full-length albums, the iTunes LP format treats music fans to an immersive album experience, filled with liner notes, lyrics, interactive menus, and bonus videos. Like any album or single purchased using iTunes, the songs included with an iTunes LP are delivered as DRM-free AAC music files that can be transferred to any iPod, iPhone, or AAC-compatible device. All of the extra stuff included with an iTunes LP--the special menus, photos, videos, and interactive elements--are only available to view directly on your computer. In spite of its limitations, the iTunes LP format should find a home with music fans looking for a richer album experience from their favorite bands.
On the video side, you can still expect to get the sort of bonus material and extras found on DVDs to many of the popular movies and TV shows available through iTunes. The format is called iTunes Extras, but just like iTunes LP, none of the added material or special menus can be transferred to an iPod or iPhone.
Apple's Genius feature, added in iTunes 8, harnesses Apple's vast collection of iTunes song data to give you educated recommendations when it comes to what music or videos may interest you based on the media you already have. The same data can also be used to create instant 25-song Genius Playlists, built around any song in your library. In iTunes 9, Apple adds another use for its Genius song recommendations called Genius Mixes. To minimize the amount of time it takes to launch iTunes and start listening to great music, Genius Mixes are automatic mixes of music from your library based around a common genre, such as Rock, Classical, Pop, or Jazz. The effect is similar to switching on a good radio station, surrendering song selection over to Apple's Genius technology, and trusting it not to mix your Zappa songs with Ella Fitzgerald.
iTunes also allows you to bless locally networked computers with Home Sharing privileges, allowing unrestricted access to their music, videos, podcasts, apps, and playlists, which can be copied between computers directly within iTunes. It's a great feature for families or any multicomputer household, and can even be set up to transfer any new iTunes store purchases between all of your computers automatically. Of course, content added to your library using means other than the iTunes Store (heaven forbid) is excluded from automatic updates, but can still be transferred manually through Home Sharing.
iTunes Match New in version 10.5.1, iTunes Match lets you subscribe to match your current music library up with iTunes' vast music database and stores all your music in iCloud for $24.99 per year. Once subscribed, iTunes scans your library then matches up your songs with the iTunes database. Even if you have songs that aren't in the iTunes database, they will be uploaded to iCloud allowing you to download them on authorized desktop computers and your iOS devices. It's important to note, however, that Apple has implemented a hard cap of 25,000 songs for iTunes Match, so those with enormous music collections won't even be able to sign up for the service. Hopefully Apple will come up with a way to account for users with giant music collections (even if that means offering the capability to designate which songs should be matched), but it seems like a large oversight to not have some way for these users to sign up.
Worth the download? Updating iTunes is about as inevitable as death and taxes. Try and resist, and some iPod or iPhone update will come along and twist your arm into updating anyhow. And while Apple hasn't done much to lighten the load of the iTunes installation package (or the bundled QuickTime install that comes with it), it's hard to complain when the program is free and offers such an impressive range of features. If you're willing to spend $24.99 a year, the iTunes matching service might be worth the download to get all your music available via the cloud (as long as you have 25,000 songs or fewer). So yes, it's worth downloading--if for no other reason than to manage your devices and the content to go with it.
The bottom line: Microsoft Office 2010 is a worthy upgrade for businesses and individual users who need professional-level productivity apps, but it will take some time to get acclimated with the reworked interface. Users looking for bare-bones, dead-simple office software should stick with Google's and other online offerings or continue using older Office versions they have already mastered.
The world has changed plenty since Microsoft introduced Office 2007. In that time, Google has become a major player, with its suite of online tools, and even Apple has made inroads with its iWork office suite, though admittedly within a smaller set of computer users. Even with the vast user base of Microsoft Office products, with new competitors in the market, Microsoft Office 2010 needed to be good. Playing catch-up and looking forward simultaneously, Microsoft tries, in Office 2010, to remain (or become) the central hub of your working life, letting you use your PC, smartphone, and the Web to make your projects come together more efficiently.
It's true: every application in the suite has been improved and tweaked in an effort to make your busy days more efficient, but you'll need to be ready for a learning curve to get accustomed to Office 2010's changes.
This update isn't for everyone; if you're a power user who has a specific way you like to do things and want all the same functionality as an older version of Microsoft Office, then you can probably get by on an older version. Just like with Office 2007, however, Office 2003 or earlier versions of the suite will need conversion tools to open many of the now default Open XML file types. But if you are eager to try out new time-saving features and are willing to spend some time learning where everything is, we think you will appreciate this major update. Even new users of productivity suites and students looking for a solid set of productivity apps will benefit from the new features in Office 2010--and surely the Academic license is more than reasonable for what you get.
One of the major new changes to the suite is the ability to collaborate and share your work using Web apps. You can collaborate using Web apps over your SkyDrive (25GB of available online storage) on Windows Live. You may also be able to collaborate with a coworker using a slimmed down Facebook-connected version of the Web apps, however, Microsoft representatives explained to us that the Facebook-connected version we saw in the company demo is only a pilot program to test social media features. As is, having two ways to connect seems a bit confusing to us, but we'll reserve judgment until the bugs are ironed out.
Office editions
We reviewed Office 2010 Professional, which costs a substantial $499. This suite includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access, in addition to SharePoint Workspace for collaborative tools, and InfoPath Designer for standardized forms. If you don't need desktop e-mail, you should opt for the lowest tier Office, Home & Student at $149, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Office 2010 Home and Business adds Outlook 2010 to the Home and Student version and costs $279. Office Professional Academic 2010 is available through authorized academic resellers only and costs $99. Unfortunately, there is no upgrade pricing for Microsoft Office 2010, because Microsoft found that most people buy Office when they buy a new computer and there was little interest in upgrades at retail outlets.
Setup
We installed Office 2010 on two different test machines, one running Windows XP and the other running Windows 7. In both cases the standard installation was fairly painless, clocking in at less than 20 minutes from start to finish. Requirements to run Office 2010 vary depending on which operating system you're running, but you'll need at the very least a 500MHz processor or higher, 256MB of RAM (512MB recommended to use more advanced features), and Windows XP with Service Pack (SP) 3 (32-bit).
Connectivity to Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server or later is required for certain advanced functionality in Office Outlook 2010. Instant Search with options that appear as you type requires Windows Desktop Search 3.0. You will also need Windows Server 2003 with SP1 or later running Windows SharePoint Services if you want to use the more advanced collaboration tools. We were happy to see that Office 2010 didn't litter our desktop with new shortcut icons, leaving it up to us how we wanted to launch the suite.
Interface
The Ribbon has returned in Office 2010 (first introduced in Office 2007) and now is offered in all the applications in suite. There was plenty of resistance among users to the introduction of the Ribbon in Office 2007 across only a few core applications, and now you will be faced with these changes across all the apps. We can only suggest to those that are still resistant to the Ribbon that, with time, the cross-application functionality becomes very useful. The Ribbon now changes based on what feature you're using at the time and you have the ability to add or remove features to any Ribbon if you need certain features for your specific workflow. Just like in Office 2007, there's a core set of always-on tabs in the Ribbon, as well as contextual tabs that appear only when the software detects that you need them. Picture formatting tools, for example, show up as a tab only if you select an image in your document.
One of the more jarring changes is the file menu that will now take you to a full-page document management section called Backstage. Like the old file menu (or logo menu) you'll be able to open, save, and print your documents from Backstage, but now Microsoft has added a slew of features to help you with the next steps for your document. You can set permissions to lock down your changes--including password-protected document encryption--create access restrictions for specific users, and include an invisible digital signature to ensure the integrity of the document.
Save and send features (sharing) are also found in Backstage, along with the option to inspect the document for hidden data (like document comments and revisions), Check Accessibility for those with disabilities, and also to ensure compatibility across older versions of Office. Once you've properly inspected your document, you can click the Save and Send button to open up options for auto-attaching the document to an e-mail, saving to the Web (with a Windows Live account) for collaboration or accessibility from anywhere, saving to SharePoint for interoffice availability, and other options. Your print preview options are also now in Backstage, so you can see how your document will look without opening extra windows. Though useful, the reworked File menu (or Backstage window) may be one of the interface tweaks people have a hard time getting used to, but we think having all these features in one place is much more efficient.
Like Office 2007, Office 2010 lets you quickly change styles, colors, and fonts in most applications of the suite through the use of pull-down Style Galleries. In PowerPoint, for example, along with helpful image-editing tools (more on that later), you can quickly preview how effects will change your image simply by mousing over each effect. Similarly, as you mouse over different fonts in Word, the document will change in real time before you commit.
Office 2010 makes this "view before you commit" functionality available in more than just stylistic changes to your document. Some of our favorite new interface features are the paste-preview tools that let you see what pasted content will look like before you commit to adding it to your document. In Word 2010, for example, once you've copied information elsewhere, you can quickly mouse over the paste preview tools to see how content will appear using formatting from the source, merged formatting, or how it will look with the source formatting stripped out.
Features
Alongside interface enhancements like the Ribbon across all Office 2010 applications, Microsoft Office 2010 offers a number of features that should reduce the time you spend gathering information so you can spend more time on solid presentation. Simple image and video editing tools are welcome additions to anyone who works with media in their documents and presentations. Many of the new features push your presentations away from the usual bullet points and toward more-engaging visual effects.
PowerPoint now provides options for editing video right within the program. You can trim video so your audience sees only the video content you want them to see. You also can add video effects, fades, and even create video triggers to launch animations during your presentation. These video bookmarks can be used to cue captions at specific points during a video, for example. When it's a static presentation you're working on--such as a publication, newsletter, or pamphlet--Office 2010 lets you color-correct and add artistic effects and borders to images so you won't need a third-party image editor. We found many of these features to be quite intuitive once we were able to track them down in their appropriate Ribbon tabs. Like many features in Office 2010, it's not the functionality that can be challenging, but rather the getting used to the feature that is.
Outlook has seen many notable feature improvements in Office 2010, which will save users time in their daily e-mail tasks if they get past the initial learning curve. The new Conversation View lets you group threads together so you can view an entire conversation in one place. With plenty of competition in Google's online Gmail search tools, Outlook 2010 needed to make attractive new features to continue to be competitive, and this feature makes searching through e-mail much easier. You also can run Clean Up to strip out redundant messages and threads so you have just the info you need without scanning through several e-mails. Microsoft got mixed reviews during beta testing of this feature, but we think that this might be one of those features (like the Ribbon) that will become more useful as users become acclimated with a new way of doing things. A new feature called Quicksteps lets you create macros for common daily tasks like regular forwarding of specific e-mails to third parties. Say you have sales e-mails from several parties that are sent to you on a regular basis, but need to go to another person within your company. With Quicksteps you could custom create a macro that would automatically send that e-mail on with the click of a button. Like the Conversation View features, Quicksteps is not immediately intuitive, but after some study, it will save you an enormous amount of time processing e-mails in the future. Even with the tweaks for simplifying your e-mail processing, Outlook still seems more in tune with large business clients than with smaller companies that could probably get by with online alternatives.
New coauthoring in Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote, as well as advanced e-mail management and calendaring capabilities in Outlook, make collaboration much easier, reducing the time it takes to finish large projects with several contributors. Businesses are required to use Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 or Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services to collaborate on projects, but private users can access their work using Windows Live and Web apps on SkyDrive. Word and PowerPoint now have a syncing mechanism to avoid sudden changes while you're working on a project (a major concern in the beta). We wonder how people will react to this specific change, since now the only way to have live coauthoring (without the need to sync up changes) will be through OneNote. In any case, offering access to shared documents in key business applications from anywhere is something any international business or business traveler can appreciate. Google Docs, though not as elegant, are extremely easy to share with other users, so offering OneNote as the only option may not be enough.
Live edits in OneNote are only one of the new features for Microsoft's notebook-like application, however. Sketching out ideas, collaborating in real time, and adding images, video, audio, and text are all available in OneNote as it sits to the side of what you're working on. This enables you to drop sections of text, images, and other tidbits into OneNote's interface to keep all your ideas in one place. An upgraded Navigation Bar makes it easy to jump between notebooks to copy or merge information. When you're collaborating on a project, OneNote now features automatic highlighting so you can quickly find changes to your notebook since your last save. Features like these, along with new visual styles and a Web version with live changes, make OneNote the key collaborative tool of the suite. Our only question is whether people will accept OneNote as their mainstay for live collaboration since it has less name recognition than bigger apps in the suite.
In addition to upgraded collaboration tools, you'll now be able to work on your documents anywhere with slimmed down Web-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. The Web based components will make sharing information easier whether it's from your home computer, your phone, or when you're traveling for business. The Web apps preserve the look and feel of a document regardless of the device you're working on--even if it's your smartphone. These apps seem to work as advertised mostly, but we wonder how well the Web-based versions will work when server loads reach into the several millions of users. What sets these apps apart from Google Docs and other services is that your documents and spreadsheets retain their formatting, giving Office 2010's Web apps a leg up against its online counterparts.
Excel has received some tweaks as well, with easier-to-read, color-coded spreadsheets and smart tools to bring in the information you need. In Excel 2010, you can flip through the tabs to access formulas, insert diagrams and charts, and quickly import data from connected sources. A new feature called Sparklines lets you create a small chart in a single cell. This lets users compare data across multiple cells with added graphical elements to make them easier to read and spot trends over time. These moves seem to suggest that Microsoft is trying to make spreadsheets a little more accessible to a wider swath of users. We welcome the new customization features, especially as Excel retains the powerful tools users have come to expect.
Those who are involved in creating their own publications and newsletters will appreciate new changes to Publisher 2010. With several available templates, you can add your personal business logo graphics and branding and then preview them in real time across each template style. Microsoft has added ligatures and Stylistic Alternates to fonts so you can add your own personal touches to your publications. Like the other applications we've talked about in Office 2010, Publisher offers the same new useful image-editing tools, so effects, color-correction, cropping, and more are only a few clicks away.
Hotmail integration
Late to our labs (and late to the game, some might say, with Google and Yahoo leading the pack) are some of the new features that Windows Live Hotmail will support when it launches to all users in July or August. Microsoft says users will be offered the option to upload Office documents or images to their SkyDrives, and then send a link of their work to a friend who uses Hotmail. This will eliminate the need to use caution when sharing large files for presentations, videos, or large collections of photos, because the documents will exist in the cloud. The recipient will be able to view documents in their original format and large multimedia files in their Inbox without the need to wait for a huge download. This gives Hotmail users the opportunity to pick and choose which content they want to download from SkyDrive.
As a result of new feature additions to Hotmail, images and video will receive new options, too, including the ability to automatically view a collection of images in a slideshow, and the ability to view photos and video from third-party services like FlickR, SmugMug, Hulu, and YouTube, all without having to leave Hotmail. Microsoft also says it will push Windows live e-mail, calendar, and contact information, and more to your Windows Mobile phone using Exchange ActiveSync.
Other new features we saw in the demo included separate sections for viewing shipping information and e-mails from social Web sites, which represent a significant amount of all e-mail messages.
Conclusion
Does Office 2010 offer enough to make it worth the upgrade from earlier versions? We think that largely depends on how you use Microsoft Office. New templates and quick access to video and image-editing tools are welcome additions for those who create visual presentations of their content. Serious spreadsheet power users will like the new features that tie data together in Excel while making complex data more accessible in the Ribbon and more exciting visually. Outlook's new conversation-scrubbing features and Quicksteps for common e-mail actions could save daily e-mail users a lot of time, if they're willing to learn the ropes initially. If you feel like Office 2003 or Office 2007 have all the features you need in your line of work, then there's probably little reason to upgrade.
Obviously, the Ribbon is now the preferred method across the entire suite for getting to features quickly. If you didn't like the Ribbon in Office 2007, you probably won't like it now, but we think there's plenty of utility in having a common interface tool across all the apps; it might be worth learning a new way of doing things if you want to streamline your work flow.
The new Hotmail integration features that will launch alongside Office 2010 may give Google Docs a run for its money if they work as advertised. We're impressed with what we've seen so far, but we'll need to reserve judgment until users are relying on the new features en masse.
Office 2010 is a worthy upgrade for those who desire new templates and visual styles, better ways of editing multimedia content in publications and presentations, and easier methods of collaboration. The ability to work from anywhere with the new Web apps is surely a big reason to upgrade if your job requires that kind of flexibility.
Editor's Note: Clicking Download Now will direct you to more information about Microsoft Office 2010 at the Microsoft Web site. The office suite is not available to the public until June.
Office 2010 and related products will deliver innovative capabilities and provide new levels of flexibility and choice that will help people.
Work anywhere with Office Web applications -- the lightweight Web browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote -- that provide access to documents from virtually anywhere and preserve the look and feel of a document regardless of device.
Collaborate better with co-authoring in Microsoft Word 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft OneNote 2010, and advanced e-mail management and calendaring capabilities in Microsoft Outlook 2010, including the option for users to "ignore" unwanted threads.
Bring ideas to life with video and picture editing, broadcast capability in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, easy document preparation through the new Microsoft Office Backstage view, and new Sparklines in Microsoft Excel 2010 to visualize data and spot trends more quickly.
Microsoft also announced that it is streamlining the number of Office editions from eight to five and enhancing each edition with additional applications and features. The company also announced that Office Web applications will be available in three ways: through Windows Live, where more than 400 million consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost; on-premises for all Office volume licensing customers including more than 90 million Office annuity customers; and via Microsoft Online Services, where customers will be able to purchase a subscription as part of a hosted offering.
Oh, Windows. You inform and entertain us. You are inescapable, and your Start menu is full of items relevant to our productivity. You move us. Sort of. To be honest, we're not sure what sort of state this fair planet of ours would be in without the ruggedly functional operating systems the folks at Redmond have handed to us over the years, and while Windows Vista might have proved that Microsoft wasn't invincible, it did nothing to demonstrate that Windows as an idea -- and for most, a necessity -- was at all in jeopardy.
Windows 7 arrives on the scene three short years after Vista, shoring up its predecessor's inadequacies
and perhaps offering a little bit more to chew on. We've been playing with the OS ever since the beta, along through the release candidate, and now at last have the final, "release to manufacturing" (RTM) edition in our grubby paws. Does it live up to its understandable hype and the implicit expectations of a major Microsoft release? Let's proceed on a magical journey to discover the truth for ourselves.
Install / boot times / shutdown
It's the most base of operating system functions. Install, turn on, turn off. But first impressions matter, and Microsoft made sure to give Windows 7 a nice sheen when it came to these things. You can read through our full installation guide for an in-depth look at the pitfalls and triumphs of Windows 7 in this department, but in short: it's fast and lightweight, but the real performance gains can be found on netbooks and with clean installs. Otherwise there's really nothing to put Vista to shame -- though the amazing breath of fresh air a clean install provides should really set cruftware-happy vendors to a bit of soul searching.
UI enhancements
Since Windows 7 is a sort of streamlined Vista underneath -- same hardware requirements, same hardware compatibility model, a bit less cruft -- you'll have to look to the basic UI for Microsoft's most visible additions to the OS. Makes sense, we suppose. Here are some of the highlights:
Aero Peek
Everybody who's used a modern operating system for more than five minutes has been met with the hassle of juggling too many windows, and Aero Peek seeks to alleviate some of that. Available with any machine capable of "fancy mode" translucent window graphics, Aero Peek lets you hover over a "show desktop" field in the right of the task bar and show the outlines of every window currently open -- which usually amounts to chaos.
More helpful, however, is the ability to hover over the fly-out thumbnails that pop up from the taskbar app groupings, and isolate that specific window while all other windows are sent to outline mode. It serves as both geography lesson and a rapid navigation method, without feeling as clunky or "all-or-nothing" as previous attempts at windows management in Windows. Check out the video demo below to see how this plays out in practice:
Aero Shake
What we first thought was merely a gimmick has become one of our favorite features: merely grab the titlebar of a window and give it a vigorous shake to minimize all other windows. Great when you're changing tasks and want to rid yourself of the clutter of your previous activities, and we hardly know how we've made it so far in life without it. Start Menu
Mac OS X might have Spotlight, but Windows now has great instant search as well, and the Windows key has a new lease on life. Merely pop open the Start Menu and start typing and search results start populating. It's not nearly as comprehensive as Spotlight, but it also doesn't seem to be faced with the same slowdowns of its Mac OS X counterpart, and typically tracks down what we're looking for (apps, usually). The Start Menu has also been enhanced with a refined layout and supplemental menus for frequently used items -- offering access to recent items used by that application, along with the new "tasks" list that Microsoft has snuck into the OS, but which are currently only used by a few Microsoft-built apps.
Aero Snap
Perhaps our favorite day-to-day improvement of them all, Aero Snap offers a surprisingly smart way of working with windows, using the mere power of a click and drag. Windows can be maximized by being pulled to the top of the screen, or set to fill one half of the screen by being dragging to the far left or right edge of the screen. An Aero Peek-style outline lets you preview what you're doing, and it's easy enough to bounce away from the "sticky" edges, or pull an already maximized window away from its moorings. Windows Key + Left Arrow or Right Arrow accomplishes the same thing for filling one half of the screen with the current window, and is perfect for lining up document comparisons.
New Taskbar
This one gets all the press, but it's really more a product of Aero Peek than anything clever in and of itself. Basically it takes some ideas from the Mac OS X dock like larger icons and app launcher duties (icons can be "pinned" to remain in place whether the application is open or not, a melding of Windows' old Quick Launch Bar into the taskbar proper), and adds in traditional Windows taskbar activity like the listing of open windows. The default functionality is fine, which keeps everything "stacked" in its respective icon, but the real money is in the "combine when taskbar is full" view, which can be accessed from the taskbar properties. This brings the benefits of verbose item names -- always a big win for Windows over Mac OS's icons-only approach -- without sacrificing the fancy Aero Peek features or the pretty icons. What's not so elegant is how hidden icons in the far-right system tray are now housed in an ugly little pop-up menu.
Even worse is the fact that dragging a file to an app icon in the taskbar doesn't allow you to open that file with the app, but instead asks if you want to "pin" the file to that app. Newsflash: we'd rather not. With a bit of work you can re-add the old fashioned Quick Launch set of mini-icons for drag and dropability, but that's pretty silly. We're glad there's enough customization available to make this livable, but we'd say Microsoft could have done a better job of thinking through its defaults.
Quick display switching
Windows + P = magic! Really, it's the little things that count, and Microsoft has made managing multiple displays and switching between commonly used configurations a total snap.
UI stayed-the-sames
Microsoft got a lot right with its new UI tweaks, but it certainly could've taken things a few logical steps further. For instance, it's odd that there's no built-in support of multifinger trackpad gestures -- why is this something that third party vendors have to figure out all by themselves? We understand that the hardware isn't universal, but we'd like to see Microsoft driving the adoption of such functionality by building clear, reliable support for it into the OS. Two finger scroll in particular: it's the best thing to happen to trackpads since tap-to-click, and we think everybody should've figured that out by now.
On the multitouch front, Windows 7's support for multitouch display interaction is laudable but hardly sufficient. Microsoft itself has poured plenty of R&D into finger-friendly interfaces, and we would hope that they'd be building some of that innovation into the OS by now -- the release of the Surface-inspiredMicrosoft Touch Pack is a nice start, but doesn't go far enough. We shudder to imagine the haphazard implementations of smartphone-style multitouch innovations we're undoubtedly going to be seeing from OEMs in the coming years.
Overall, Microsoft has failed to establish a cohesive styling and operation model to its own applications, which range from the relatively new "ribbon" toolbars of Office, (and now WordPad, above, and Paint), to the website-like Control Panel navigation, to the ancient Device Manager trees, to the tabbed properties panes, and so on. In an attempt to simplify many of its interfaces, frequently used actions have been slowly popping up as buttons where menu bars used to be, while the deep functionality of "true" menus has been hidden elsewhere in the interface. All of this wouldn't be so horrible if Microsoft was the only builder of applications for Windows, but given thousands and thousands of developers out there making widely disparate application interfaces for Windows, we'd really appreciate it if Microsoft took a bit more leadership and more clearly defined a UI design language that was consistent and useful for users.
Notable app changes
Windows Media Center
We've gone way in-depth on this over at Engadget HD, but suffice it to say that Windows Media Center in Windows 7 is vastly superior to Windows Vista's version, and most all of the bugs from the Windows 7 beta seem to be ironed out quite nicely. The interface is a real treat, the extender functionality to the Xbox 360 and 3rd party boxes is much improved and quite snappier, and a truly marvelous amount of hardware is supported. Windows Media Player
It's pretty much Windows Media Player, you know? The good news is that Microsoft has greatly expanded the codec support, to something bordering on comprehensive:
Pulled from Microsoft's Engineering Windows 7 blog
What's even more fun is the new "Play to" function, which can beam a locally-controlled audio playlist to computers that are part of your HomeGroup, DLNA devices like the PS3, or Media Center Extenders like the Xbox 360. Remotely shared libraries are also automatically detected off of DLNA or Home Server devices, and everything pretty much "just works."
If you're really feeling crazy you can tie your media library to your Windows Live ID and access your home media from anywhere over the internet.
Windows Explorer
It's hard to quantify most of the changes to the basic file browser activities in this release, other than to say "it just works" quite a bit more frequently than it did in Vista. It's smarter about spotting file types, there are solid in-pane previews of music, pictures and video (if you know to turn on the preview pane), and the particular folder we're targeting with a drag and drop is lined up in the simplified left hand sections of "Favorites" and "Libraries" more often than not. Unfortunately, it's not all roses: some media files we knew the OS was perfectly capable of playing through its Windows Media Player-powered preview pane had somehow been "claimed" by Zune and disabled for playback from within Windows Explorer. Looks like somebody missed a meeting.
Internet Explorer
We'll be honest: we avoid IE like the plague, and recommend you do as well. Microsoft continues to make improvements to the browser, and the nagging, over-protective "training wheels" approach to security is probably appropriate for those naive enough to use this thing, but the fact is that there are too many faster, better and "free-er" browsers out there to really waste much time in Microsoft's default. Anecdotally, the browser hard crashed a couple minutes into us writing this paragraph.
Notable app omissions
Windows Mail
It was never the highlight of the OS, but Microsoft has for some reason decided to ship Windows 7 completely without a mail application, unless you count the browser. You're encouraged to download Windows Live Mail with the Windows Live Essentials app pack, but while it does an alright job, it's hardly a first string effort, and we're not sure why Microsoft has decided that emailing people isn't really a core functionality of a modern operating system, much less something that Microsoft should have an industry-leading app for inside the box.
Windows Movie Maker
Another item relegated to the Windows Live app pack, and this time slapped with a "Beta" moniker for extra shame. We actually have a bit of a soft spot for Microsoft's no-frills approach to movie editing for the everyman, and if YouTube is any indication, Movie Maker certainly gets the job done for a lot of people. Still, this is probably something that should be spruced up and packed in with the OS, and we're even more sure that it should support the now-defacto AVCHD format by now.
Windows Live Photo Gallery
You guessed it, another one kicked to Windows Live Essentials land, where supposedly "essential" apps go to die. Unfortunately, this particular app seems an even more logical omission, given its too-strong ties to a Windows Live account (something we've owned for years without managing to upload a single photo to, strangely enough).
Other sundry necessities
We could probably understand this app scarcity a decade ago -- Microsoft's job is only really half done when you buy the OS, they also need to keep that Office team afloat -- but given its modern day competition (Apple and Google, to be specific), it's hard to understand why Microsoft is shipping this OS without a calendar app, PDF viewer, lightweight office replacements or an IM / video conferencing solution. Microsoft blames anti-trust laws, stating that it's hard for it to work in all the "services" it wants into its apps if it bundles with the OS, but we'd say most of its applications could do with a bit more "open" when it comes to services (Flickr, YouTube, anything that isn't Windows Live, etc.) anyways. In any case, most computer vendors will be striking a deal with Microsoft or Google or whomever to supply some of these necessities with their shipping computers, but we can't help but think that Microsoft is leaving some vital elements of the operating system incomplete and wide open to inconsistent experiences by neglecting all of these app types in this way.
Security / networking
Microsoft had already done a lot of work since the initial release of Vista on not bugging us incessantly with pop-up security nags, but Windows 7 strikes an even better balance. What is disconcerting is how often security warnings include an "unknown" as the publisher -- it's not really teaching anybody to be judicious about what pops up in the warning if the warning itself doesn't even know what's going on.
In the end we'll find out just how secure Windows 7 is once it's in the wild and hackers start hammering on it, but with the abundance and ease of Windows updates these days, most anybody with an ounce of common sense and a speedy internet connection should be able to steer clear of danger. Meaning: we're all doomed.
On the networking front, HomeGroups are a new Windows 7-specific method of simplifying networking between computers on a local network, and we're really in love. After decades of being stymied by complicated Windows networking setups, we've finally been able to reliably and rapidly connect multiple computers and share files / media / printers / whatever without resorting to a sneakernet or inviting our smarter friends over with their fancy Computer Science degrees to figure it out for us.
Compatibility
Check out our upgrade guide for more info on our specific compatibility issues, but the long and the short of it is that anything we found to work in Vista seemed to work just fine (in some cases better!) in Windows 7. That goes for hardware and software, but of course the real test will be when this OS is unleashed upon the masses -- your mom's brother's 25 year old printer might not make the cut, and we'll be sure to pour out a 40 upon its behalf.
In truth, Microsoft does a very good job with keeping a truly insane quantity of hardware and drivers and vendors happy, but we still think they could do better. New and improved utilities to detect and install hardware are present in Windows 7, but they still don't feel entirely smart enough -- we had to track down plenty of drivers manually, and even dipped a toe now and then into the (shudder) Device Manager, which has hardly received an improvement since World War II. There has to be a better way to make sure people don't have to be smart, patient and lucky to get all their hardware working with their OS.
Of course, it's not a small problem to surmount. The brand new Device Stage seems to best illustrate the scope of this issue. Microsoft has presented a sort of candy-coated exterior to the Device Manager in the Devices and Printers view, which displays devices it recognizes as large, lickable icons, and lets you drill into further functions with a right click, or a double click if you're feeling lucky. Unfortunately, there's only a very small set of devices the OS seems truly at ease with. Sure, it picks up on most anything we plug in over USB, seeking out drivers over the internet and installing them quite painlessly, but actual functionality usually leaves a lot to be desired -- a double click usually gives us only the driest of driver-management options. Of our oodles of devices, most are represented by a generic NAS icon, many are represented with bizarre names (or eight names, in the case of our E71) and only two devices we tried offered a true Device Stage view, which was merely populated with battery and storage status.
It's simultaneously a testament to the insane diversity of devices Microsoft has to deal with, along with the implicit reliance on vendors to provide drivers in a logical and consistent manner. We don't imagine the Device Stage will be populated with truly useful infos on our favorite devices for many months (or years) to come.
Overall speed / stability
Speed is really one of Windows 7's major selling points. Particularly for the netbook set, Windows 7 can turn a machine that's nearly unusable under Windows Vista (especially if it's been saddled with the manufacturer's own set of crapware) into a quite potent workhorse. That's partly to do with the slimmed down kernel of the OS, which has lower memory requirements than Vista, but it's also due to Microsoft's rework of GUI scheduling, which means less bottlenecks and less unresponsive moments.
Still, it's not perfect. On the well-appointed machine we performed an in-place upgrade from Vista on (trust us, a clean install is worth the hassle, learn from our mistakes) we found Gadgets taking a while to load on boot, occasional system-wide slowdowns when we were doing a tad "too much" with media, and Internet Explorer felt pretty sad compared to the competition.
While streaming Windows Media Center to our Xbox 360 we had trouble maintaining an internet connection, or perhaps a network connection -- it was unclear which was dropping. After we disconnected and reconnected the network would work again, but would break soon after. We eventually gave up and restarted, after which things seemed to work just fine.
Our worst experiences, however, were with a clean install to a quite modern netbook. The OS became increasingly unstable over time -- Windows Explorer itself seemed to be the main culprit -- and the machine eventually failed to boot entirely. Luckily, the Startup Repair utility managed to jump to the rescue and found a System Restore point that booted fine, though we lost the few customizations we'd made up to that point and were face with basically a fresh install again. It was nice of Windows 7 to recover itself so well, but we would obviously have preferred to not run into that issue in the first place.
SKUs
As for pricing and SKU confusion? Well, you'll have to decide that one for yourself:
FROM XP / VISTA
FROM WIN7 STARTER
FROM WIN7 HOME PREMIUM
FROM WIN7 PRO
FULL PRICE
HOME PREMIUM
$119.99*
$79.99
N/A
N/A
$199.99
PRO
$199.99
$114.99
$89.99
N/A
$299.99
ULTIMATE
$219.99
$164.99
$139.99
$129.99
$319.99
Full feature lists and additional SKUs can be found here. Family Pack info is here.
Madness? Yes. But there are still some decent options for most people, and if you've gotten a jump on things you might have already scored yourself that $50 upgrade -- don't you feel smug? In the long run, most people will end up getting Windows 7 with a new machine, so perhaps it doesn't matter so much, but we still wouldn't mind if Microsoft did a bit more work trimming down these full version pricetags. Doesn't Microsoft want those too-cool-for-school Apple hipsters dabbling in the dark side via Bootcamp?
Wrap-up
Where Vista felt like a sprawling mess, Windows 7 has patched up the holes and feels like a tight, unified mechanism. It's hardly full of surprises, but that's usually a good thing when it comes to operating systems. If you've never been a Windows person, there's hardly anything here that will change your mind about that. However, most human beings on this planet have some sort of interaction with Windows on a regular basis, whether by choice or necessity, and Windows 7 is great news for those millions of souls.
Instead of switching up the formula, Windows 7 is really an extension and a refinement of the true tenets of Windows (that we just made up): broad hardware compatibility, coatings of usability over deep functionality, and a "everything for everybody" approach to feature sets and SKUs. With such broad aims, and such a diverse userbase, it's no wonder that there are plenty of spots where the OS still falls short, but taken as a whole it's clear that Microsoft has taken a strong step forward with Windows 7. The world will know on October 22.
