Windows 7:What People Will Like and What They Won't

As I've been using Windows 7 over the last couple of months, I've become convinced that most users will find a lot to like in the new operating system. My guess is that it will get a much warmer reception than Windows Vista did. But there are a lot of changes--more than you might think--and I'm sure there will be people who won't be happy with all of them.
But let's start with the things I think everyone will like. It's faster. At least in Beta 1, the system seems to boot faster on my system. In benchmarks, I don't see any significant performance difference in running applications on Windows 7 as compared with Vista SP1. But in practice, it just feels a bit more responsive, and it seems to boot faster on my system.
Now, every OS seems to degrade in performance over time, as you add more updates and applications, so I can't be sure this will be the case in the production version, but for now I'm quite happy.
More after the jump.

It takes fewer resources. Windows 7 is lighter than Windows XP and will even run on netbooks, machines where Vista is a non-starter. That's a win for everyone: users, PC makers, and Microsoft.

It's less annoying:By default, the user account control feature no longer asks your permission for things you are changing to the system, only for things that other programs are changing. That means it pops up a whole lot less often, and as a result, my guess is people will pay more attention to it. That's good. Some people are worried that it means that if you install a rogue program on your system, it could do more damage, but that may be an unavoidable risk--once a rogue program is installed, you're in trouble anyway.

The new askbar is very useful: The Windows 7 taskbar works quite differently from the one in Windows Vista or Windows XP. Now you can "pin" programs to the taskbar, creating a row of programs (as on the current Macintosh) that will either switch to open windows in that program or launch the program if it is closed.

Hovering the mouse over the icon shows active thumbnails of what the open windows look like, and right-clicking brings up a list of the most recent items you've opened in the applications, including Web sites in IE and frequent locations in Windows Explorer. A tiny space in the far right-hand corner hides all the windows and makes the desktop visible.

This sounds like a small change, but in practice, it's a really nice enhancement. It may take a little bit of getting used to, but I suspect nearly all Windows users will get used to this and like it. If you don't like it, you'll have options for changing it back to the way it worked under Vista. ExtremeTech has a good preview here with all the details.It has an improved backup program.

I've generally been happier with the programs that come bundled with most external hard drives than the one that came with earlier versions of Windows, but Windows 7 has a perfectly nice, easy-to-use backup program designed to back up its settings and your files to an external hard drive on a simple schedule. It's not continuous backup, but it's much better than what was included in previous versions. I'm still amazed that Apple was able to sell Leopard mostly on the basis of its Time Machine backup, and I'm constantly reminding people to back up, so this can only be a good thing.

There are other things that offer potential, but will need support from third parties to be useful. One of these is DeviceStage: This gives you a photo of the printer, camera, or other device that can appear in the task bar and give you direct access to what the device can do. It sounds cool, and if it really works, I expect people will like it, but it will need a lot more device support to be useful.

It won't be completely compatible. No new operating system ever is. Even though Windows 7 appears to be quite similar to Windows Vista in terms of compatibility, and has a number of nice features to make compatibility easier, you know it won't run everything. And that will always be a problem, which is why I bet companies want more time working with it before deciding on an upgrade path. (I'll have more on compatibility tomorrow).

It's just different. Again, people are used to Windows XP or even Vista. And again, Microsoft has moved some things around and that will take some getting used to.
Overall, my guess is that most people are going to be very happy with Windows 7. It solves most of the issues we've had with Vista; and it's faster, leaner, and just better looking. But I'm sure there will be people who won't like it--indeed, who will just prefer XP because it's what they are familiar with. Nothing Microsoft could do would please