Aero Shake In Windows 7, when you click on the title bar of any window and shake it every other open window gets minimised [...]]]> I’ve been living with Windows 7 for a good few months now and in that time have discovered a couple of little ‘hidden gems’ which I wanted to share with you:

Aero Shake
In Windows 7, when you click on the title bar of any window and shake it every other open window gets minimised straight back in to your taskbar, reducing clutter on your screen.  This allows you to focus on the one window and then when ready shake it again and the other windows will reappear.

There are additional Aero user interface related features which make a welcome debut.  These include Aero Peek which allows you to immediately see what’s going on in an application just by hovering over the icon in the task bar and Aero Snap which quickly allows you to rearrange your desktop by slamming any open window against the left, right or top side of your screen; try it!

Sticky Notes
Proof, if needed, that some of the simplest applications make the largest differences to the end user experience.  One of the most commonly used applications on my PC used to be the incredibly simple ‘notepad’ as I find that my working life works a lot better if I simplify everything down in to lists.

Rather than jotting notes on random pieces of paper that will almost certainly get lost throughout the day I used to dump everything in notepad and ensure that every line was eventually cleared so I was left with a blank page before I went home.

Sticky notes have a similar application.  To get started click on the start menu and type in ‘sticky’ and begin typing tasks for the day or things to remember in to little post it notes that stick to your screen.  When complete either close or minimise the application to get back to the job in hand, safe in the knowledge that once Sticky Notes are reopened, these tasks will reappear exactly as you left them.  When a task has been completed or the note simply isn’t needed, it can be deleted with one click of the mouse.

Improved Calculator
Windows 7 calculator has improved considerably; now rather than being an arithmetic only affair, it can be operated in four modes – Standard, Scientific, Programmer and Statistical.  It can also perform unit conversion, for example grams to ounces, metres to feet and Celsius to Fahrenheit along with a couple of unexpected features such as the ability to calculate the number of days between two dates or the value of your mortgage repayment.   Surely in the next version of Windows the calculator application will finally gain graphical capabilities.

Windows Disk Image Burner
For some time now the preferred method of copying and storing CD’s and DVD’s has been by using an ISO file; a single image which includes the contents of an entire disk.  Reading these files used to require a specific application (the likes of which I’ve covered previously in Click) but every version of Windows 7 now includes support for these straight out the box; simply double click on the ISO file that you wish to burn, insert a blank CD or DVD and you’re done.

Let’s take a moment to gaze into the future – The year is 2005 and Microsoft is releasing Windows Longhorn to the world; the operating system that will take over from Windows XP. Of course I’m not a fortune teller so I can’t predict exactly what the Operating System will [...]]]>

Let’s take a moment to gaze into the future – The year is 2005 and Microsoft is releasing Windows Longhorn to the world; the operating system that will take over from Windows XP. Of course I’m not a fortune teller so I can’t predict exactly what the Operating System will be like however Microsoft have released a number of preview versions so this week I’ll be taking an educated guess as to what it is that we can expect.

“Longhorn” is actually the codename for the next incarnation of Windows and it is highly unlikely that the Operating System will be called “Windows Longhorn”; knowing Microsoft it will probably be something highly original such as Windows XP 2005 or Windows XP2.

To be quite fair I didn’t really have the inclination to install the ‘Alpha’ (early preview) release on one of my computers so the information here is going to be based on the reports of a number of people who have and reading through them it has become apparent that a lot of the improvements are going to be cosmetic. For example the Start Menu and task bar will be enhanced with a new Sidebar component that can optionally appear locked to one side of the desktop. Special effects will make the screen feel ‘deeper’ than the traditional flat Windows desktop although the drawback of this is that the Operating System will need higher end video equipment to display this; such special effects include Windows tumbling onto the screen, rotating windows, warped windows and alpha blending between windows.

Longhorn will include DVD recording abilities as standard which is especially important with the rapidly decreasing price of DVD recording technology.

As with Windows XP, Longhorn will ship in different versions such as Home Edition, Professional Edition, Tablet PC Edition (for Tablet PC’s – More about that in a future article) and so on.

Quite an interesting development is an add-in to the Windows NTFS file system which is known as Windows Future Storage (WinFS) and this system will allow all kinds of complex data searching which is not possible today. For example your email messages, contacts, Word documents, and music files are all currently completely separate however this won’t be the case in Longhorn. Quite how this is going to work or how effective this will be I will not speculate on.

I’ve heard reports that Longhorn will be a faster Operating System than Windows XP although this can not be verified at such an early stage; apparently the setup routine when initially installing the application completes in around 15 minutes which bodes well in comparison to the 30-40 minute routine which is standard in Windows XP.

This is all I know so far; the beta (testing) edition comes out in 2004 and so obviously I will get my hands on a copy and review it for the Herald Express then.