When Microsoft rolled Vista out, a lot of people did not find it to be the fantastic next big thing Microsoft had assured us it would be. They traded XP in for a flashy, though often unwieldy, design and a slew of compatibility issues. Consequently, with the release of Windows 7, it is really no surprise that a lot of people are wary of trading in Vista for the newest unknown factor. Whether you like Vista, do not like Vista but have gotten used to it, or refused to give up your copy of XP Pro, it is natural that you may still be curious and wonder if Windows 7 is right for you and your syste

m. It does offer a lot of new features, an updated interface, and some promised improvements over issues that Vista suffered from – but are they worth it for you? Will Windows 7 be something you can both use and enjoy? To find out, you need to know more about these new features, and we are going to take a look at one of the biggest ones – the new Taskbar interface and its associated features.

Windows 7's New Taskbar Interface

 

The taskbar is an important component of your desktop, and Windows 7 has introduced a completely revamped taskbar design that may cut down on clutter and make things a lot easier for many PC users. The Windows 7 Start menu is completely redesigned, as is the System Tray. The old small icons and text labels that Vista and XP use have been traded in for larger icons and no labels. This is good if you are able to keep the icons straight – as in, being able to remember for sure that this particular little picture means it coincides with this particular program – because it makes your System Tray look a lot less cluttered and busy. But if that will be a problem, then you can switch back to the old way of things by shrinking the icons and having the text labels added back in.

 

With Vista and XP, you could get fast one click access to your programs by dragging their icons into your Quick Launch toolbar. Handy! But Windows 7 has eliminated the Quick Launch feature and incorporated what it afforded you (fast access to your programs) into the Taskbar itself. You can now drag a program's icon from the Start menu or the Desktop to the Taskbar, and Windows 7 will keep it stuck there for you, letting you launch the program without having to dig around in your Start menu to find it. You can also arrange and rearrange your icons in the Taskbar by just dragging them into new positions, keeping things nice and orderly, just how you want them.

 

Windows 7 has also taken Windows Vista's Live Preview feature and made it potentially more efficient and useful for you. In Windows Vista, if you let your mouse pointer hover over a program's icon in the Taskbar, you would get a thumbnail window view – handy! However, when you had more than one window open, you could still only see one preview window at a time – not so handy! With Windows 7, if you hover the mouse pointer over an icon with multiple windows open, the thumbnail previews will all appear and slide into their positions right above the Taskbar, letting you easily see them all at once and locate the window you were after. You also get a new feature called Jump Lists that let you choose from an array of actions specific to a program, quickly and easily – whether it's automatically opening a new browser window or starting up a new doc in Office.

 

These are just a few of the new changes users will see in Windows 7, and if they sound good to you, you may just be the right candidate for an upgrade!