Windows 7: Good, Bad and the Ugly

Have you heard about Windows 7?

This week Microsoft is distributing the “Release Candidate” of Windows version 7. I’m sure you’ll be reading about it all over the place. Blogs like Ed Bott Windows Expertise and Paul Thurotts Supersite provide information on all the new features complete with screen shots and setup advice. Naturally, I like to focus on the unusual and this week I picked out some of my favorite and not-so favorite features.

There is plenty of good new stuff in Windows 7. New desktop backgrounds, screen savers and animation effects really make Windows 7 a graphical experience. I tend to look for the not to obvious new features. Here’s one that really makes sense.

Another feature that looks really nice is the System Health Report. This can be found in the Control Panel on Advanced Tools for System Performance.

It takes about 60 seconds to create a report and Microsoft explains its purpose as follows…

I was hoping for some user friendly information but what you get looks like some kind of SQL statement which makes absolutely no sense to me.

Here’s some more unfriendly, useless system performance information. The red flag is warning me I don’t have any approved AntiVirus product installed. Everything else is about as useful as a message that says “Error #5”.

One of the things that make me the happiest is when features are located in the same place as previous versions. When I need to help someone fix a problem it’s so much easier to have a single set of instructions. I prefer this to having waste an Email asking which version of Windows is being used before I know how to provide detailed steps on how to get to the desired feature.

So I was pleased that under Internet Options, the button to delete saved content to clean up the cache was basically in the same location. I was even happier to see that Microsoft has expanded the types of information you may want to delete. The only problem is you might be confused by the wording in the following dialog. Does the check mean it will be deleted or it will be preserved?

Now for one last final nitpick even though it’s not really new in Windows 7.
Why do they still call it a Recycle-Bin? If you move files there are they reused to save a tree somewhere? It’s nice to be politically correct but we really need to go back to calling this a Garbage Can or even better a File Shredder.

I’ve only had the new Windows 7 for a week so there’s a lot more I haven’t explored yet. Stay turned for more Good, Bad and Ugly.