Windows 7 is a tremendous improvement over Vista and XP. Where I felt annoyed at just about every turn by Vista, I find myself refreshed by Windows 7. Performance is improved, clutter is reduced, and common tasks are simpler and surfaced more readily. I even like the name, which somehow seems honest and appropriately understated. The improvements are subtle, but they are many and meaningful. I particularly like the Window sizing feature snap (although I'm not a big user of its cousin shake) and the improvements to wireless network management. On the security front, Windows 7 changes are significant. Security is an ever changing landscape, as threats and computer usage evolve rapidly. Windows 7 does a good job addressing the evolving security landscape while building on the work of previous versions of the operating system. One area where Vista clearly took a lot of heat was User Account Control (UAC). This set of features, which was introduced in Vista, remains largely intact in Windows 7. UAC is the source of the administrative permissions prompts that Apple lampooned in a 2007 television ad entitled “Security”. Interestingly, OS X implements similar administrative prompting, which can be more annoying since the prompting requires entry of an administrative password, where the same feature in Windows does not. The nod goes to OS X however in that Vista prompting seemed more frequent than necessary. In Windows 7, Microsoft set out to change this.
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