I’ve now had a good opportunity to poke around in Windows 7′s new and changed features, and the time has come to deliver a verdict on this new Windows release.

I’m extremely impressed by two aspects of the operating system in particular.  The performance is considerably improved from Vista.  It’s quick to install, quick to start-up, applications and files open in a snap and it’s extremely responsive in day to day use.

Also application compatibility is miles ahead of Vista.  Two applications I use a lot in particular, Microsoft Photodraw and the DVR to WMV  Convert video conversion software, never worked under Vista.  Photodraw was buggy and DVR to WMV kept mucking up the aspect ratio on recorded widescreen TV programmes.  Now these programs are back to their old selves, which is good, because that only leaves one other piece of software I used on XP, PC Tune Up to fix.  It too doesn’t work under Vista.

Diagnostic and in particular backup and restore utilities are also significantly improved, though it remains to be seen if the most useful, Complete PC Backup is included in the home edition this time.  It’s now far easier for any user to back up their copy of Windows and restore it in the event of a disaster.  The inclusion of a start-up repair system is excellent and has been a long time coming.

User Account Control (UAC) has finally been brought into line, though there are still major improvements that can be made, these include a Remember my choice for this program tick box which would really help with programs you have running at start-up that need UAC authorisation.  There are ways round this however using the task scheduler.

The new accessibility options are also a great leap forward, especially the ability to zoom the screen’s resolution to up to 150% of its normal size.

The libraries function, which I’ve previously written about, is a fantastic addition and I’m sure, will prove an enormous time-saver for all those people who can figure out how to add tags and ratings to all their files.

Finally, file copies happen at the speed they really should, if not a bit quicker.  There’s none of this “Preparing to Copy” nonsense any more, it just gets on with the job at hand.

Could it not be argued however that, with Windows 7 being essentially an incremental update on the existing Vista code, that most of these could be back-ported to Vista in a service pack.

The new usability options including window snapping, so you can for instance easily compare two windows side by side, are excellent but hard to find unless you come across them accidentally, so it remains to be seen how useful they will be.

The taskbar is my biggest gripe and I’ve already written a lot about that so won’t go on about it again.  It’s a point that extends to the control panel though.  There are too many options there because we’ve got this half way house with all the new ways of managing Windows, such as the new Devices and Printers console sitting alongside the original Device Manager.  Why do we still need both ways of doing things?

Libraries and search still isn’t easy or intuitive enough to set up and much more work needs to be done on usability here.

So… the verdict?

Unfortunately I’m still a little underwhelmed by Windows 7.  Sure, it’s an accomplished piece of software and leaps ahead of Vista but, unless you specifically need one of the new updates, and there’s a whole bunch I’ve not mentioned, then I can’t see any real reasons to upgrade from Windows Vista at this time.

Maybe this will change?  We’ve still got the release candidate to see, that has been reported will be with us in April, and I’m still banging on at Microsoft about the taskbar, but for the moment I just don’t find the reasons to upgrade compelling enough.  This could be extremely bad for Microsoft.

The biggest and most positive changes come for business users, and I wrote before about how important it is that Windows 7 is bought and installed by business customers.  There’s an awful lot there.  Consumers though are getting less of an impressive deal.

The reasons Vista was so compelling an upgrade were for many of the things that made us so angry with it, such as UAC.  Okay, so it had a steep learning curve but that just showed that it was a serious progression from XP.  The learning curve to Windows 7 will be much smaller, and that’s a shame.